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Misano WSBK: Sykes 'takes the positives' from second

Tom Sykes took plenty of encouragement from his close second to Kawasaki team-mate Jonathan Rea in the World Superbike opener at Misano.

Race one saw the Kawasaki pair battle it out for the whole race, with little over half a second splitting them at any given time though Rea emerged the victor by just 0.90s on the line.

While Sykes wasn’t able to even launch an overtaking maneuver he took confidence from his performance and another important 20 points in the title chase.

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“I wasn’t able to make a clean pass in the last few laps, I know I wasn’t able to put my nose in a good position,” said the Yorkshireman. “I have to be happy, I think if somebody told me I’d be less than a second from the race win I’d have taken it.

“I know yesterday everybody was surprised and impressed by Jonathan’s pace so I have to say at that point we’d have to take the positives. 

“We’ve been very consistent in recent rounds and we’ve come to another completely different circuit where Jonathan’s very strong, he’s won here on a Honda and he’s won on a Kawasaki.

“We had every good as chance of winning the race today we just couldn’t get the right track position on the last lap.

“I’m obviously disappointed with myself for this, I think maybe we had the chance to make a pass earlier but obviously then it would have been a different race.”

Sykes and Rea were gripped in battle for much of the race, but the former was never quite close enough to give the reigning world champion something to think about.

Lap times dropped for both, once quite drastically, during the race and although Sykes felt that might have been Rea backing him up he said any race leader will dictate the race to their preference.

Although he chased his team-mate hard from start to finish, Sykes was unable to get the job done in terms of race victory but he feels given some work before tomorrow’s second race a win could be on the cards.

“Lots to consider for tomorrow, but finally Kawasaki have made a great job with two different riders and now we need to try and improve,” he said. “Of course everybody tries to improve but it’s always a fine balance because you can so easily make a small mistake when you try to improve.

“We can rest tonight knowing we’ve got a good package but maybe some very small modifications will make the difference.”

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