Championship leader Tom Sykes took his Kawasaki Racing Team Ninja ZX-10R to the Superpole win in Turkey despite this being his first visit to the long and challenging 5.340km Istanbul Park circuit.

Sykes and his Kawasaki crew made set-up improvements to his Ninja ZX-10R overnight and they paid off for Tom on track, even though bad weather earlier in the day lost Tom valuable time at a circuit he had never ridden on before this weekend.

Using the first Superpole session, held in dry conditions, to verify the new set-up Sykes was fastest in the first and last of three Superpole contests, taking a narrow but important advantage of 0.022 seconds over his main championship rival Sylvain Guintoli.

Sykes’ reputation as the modern day Superpole maestro continued this weekend. He scored his seventh pre-race ‘win’ of the year in 11 attempts, took his career Superpole total to 18 and in doing so became the fourth most successful qualifier in the history of SBK racing in his own right. He only needs three more Superpole wins to equal the career total of SBK legend Carl Fogarty, who has 21 pole positions.

KRT rider Loris Baz will not ride this weekend to continue his recovery from injuries sustained at the previous round. Mark Aitchison (Kawasaki Team Pedercini) took 10th spot on the grid with Federico Sandi (Kawasaki Team Pedercini) 11th.

Tom Sykes:

“I am happy because this is a circuit I had never been to before and I only got two practice sessions yesterday. I lost two sessions today to the weather so considering all this I am happy. I am fighting a bit of a cold but the changes we made to the bike set-up last night were positive. My crew chief Marcel and all the guys at Kawasaki do a great job and we went in the right direction. We were able to try the adjustments early in Superpole and it was clear to see we had a good direction. We just need to see if we can put this to good use tomorrow. It is funny how it goes because Sylvain Guintoli is right beside me on the grid tomorrow. It seems we have been fighting all season, in qualifying and races, so it looks like it is going the distance!”

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