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Sepang WSBK: Sykes dominates to win race one

Kawasaki’s Tom Sykes dominated the opening World Superbike race at Sepang today, taking the lead from Alex Lowes at the end of lap one and promptly opening a gap which no-one could bridge and cut his gap in the points chase to Chaz Davies by nine points as series leader Jonathan Rea extended his advantage with second place.

Sykes was in a class of his own as he broke his own lap record on the third circuit and got the hammer down, taking the gap to 3.5s over Rea at half distance and the managing his tyre while pulling further and further ahead, crossing the line with a seven-second advantage over Rea with Davies’ Ducati a further two seconds back.

The Huddersfield looked very much more like the man who won the 2013 championship as he streaked away and didn’t suffer any of the expected tyre grip drop, even though he was clearly suffering from a lot of spin in the closing laps.

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Rea admitted in parc ferme that he just didn’t have anything for Sykes and added he would make some bike balance changes overnight to take some stress off the front tyre for race two tomorrow.

Althe BMW’s Jordi Torres took fourth place but had to fend off a late challenge from Alex Lowes’ Pata Yamaha. The Derby-based rider had led on lap one but after getting passed by Sykes and then running wide trying to defend against Rea which allowed both the Caatletown man and Davies past, Lowes made an error that dropped him to ninth.

Lowes then had to fight to get past both Hondas, Davide Giugliano and Markus Reiterberger, who was forced out with what looked like an electrical problem, to take fifth place. He was lapping fractionally quicker than Torres’ S1000RR but ran out of laps.

Giugliano began brightly but slowly slipped back to sixth while Michael Van Der Mark eventually got the better of Honda team-mate Nicky Hayden for seventh. Hayden, a former MotoGP world champion, had some fast early pace but looked to have run into tyre problems early as he was altering his corner exit style lap by lap to find grip.

Anthony West took a brilliant ninth place for Pedercini Kawasaki while Leon Camier denied Josh Brookes a top-ten finish with two laps left as he put the underpowered and overweight MV Agusta into tenth place, pushing Brookes to 11th. Milwaukee BMW team-mate Karel Abraham took 12th place.

Both the Ioda Aprilias failed to finish as Alex De Angelis retired and Lorenzo Savadori crashed out.

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