BMW's Tom Sykes was again unable to capitalise on a good Superpole performance and struggled at Misano with 'small issues' which saw a best result of eighth at a track where he stood on the podium two years ago.
The Huddersfield man appears frustrated with the M1000RR after positive winter testing but believes he has what it takes to fight at his home Donington Park round.
“To be honest, it was a difficult day. After the Superpole race we had quite a good feeling actually but we were missing in some areas and only really could finish in the top-seven, which for me is not acceptable," said Sykes.
"So we tried something with the bike for the big race, but unfortunately that was not working out. At least we got a lot of information out of it. It was a difficult race for me and we learned a lot on the back of it now, so we keep working now. After another test we are going for the next round to Donington.
"I would like to think we’ve got the package to fight for the race there. We need to get on top of the little issues which we have got, so we hope for another step forward with the BMW M 1000 RR. For now there will be a disappointing end of the weekend here at Misano, but we pick ourselves up and try to move on.”
The team will travel to Navarra for another test to try and iron out the problems and BMW's motorsport chief Mark Bongers is well aware of where the squad is falling down.
“We were definitely not where we expected to be. As such, it was disappointing. We did not manage to transfer the set-up from one circuit to the next. The opposition can clearly do that better than us," he said.
"All weekend we failed to give our riders a bike on which they are competitive. In the case of Tom, we reckoned on him taking eighth place. We must now find out why he fell so far back.
"On the whole it was disappointing because we definitely arrived here with greater expectations. We must work on being able to transfer a basic set-up from one circuit to the next. Before the next races at Donington Park we will do some testing at Navarra, where we will do our homework and work really hard."
