BMW’s Tom Sykes may have fallen foul of a duff tyre in the second WorldSBK outing at Motorland Aragon as he plummeted from a top five slot into 12th place at the chequered flag.

The former champion moved to the soft Pirelli SC0 for race two - on which he had been fast at other points during the weekend - but it just didn’t have the grip Sykes was expecting.

“Everything was good, we were top five in most of the sessions and with the exception of my mistake in Superpole almost could have had pole,” said Sykes, who went so wide in the final turn on his final qualifying lap he came back on track with a hot dog.

“In the final race we did not have the correct rear traction, which is a shame because the bike did not change and on the same tyre I was so fast during the race weekend, so with my honest opinion and with my experience I certainly feel we perhaps did not have a tyre that was to its full potential.

It was a bit of a disappointment on a great weekend but this is part of racing. Sometimes these things happen and we will be making up for this moving forward.”

“Honestly, it has been a very positive weekend for the entire BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team. I feel that we have again made some steps forward.

“I am very impressed and also there have been a lot of people inside the racing paddock who have commented on the potential of the BMW S1000RR, so I think we are heading in the right direction and are definitely making good progress.”

Sykes was able to remain with the pack until lap eight when his pace suddenly dropped from a 1’51.654 to a 1’52.042 and it never recovered. By comparison, even Michael Rinaldi was doing 1’51s on lap 14…