Tom Sykes capped off a perfect weekend in Misano by taking pole position and a dominant double victory for the third time in 2014.
The reigning world champion erased all bad memories from Malaysia by easing clear of team-mate Loris Baz in both races to take his 20th and 21st World Superbike victories.
Although he was suffering from an injured right hand sustained in that first race spill at Sepang, no one was able to live with Sykes’ pace as he consistently lapped two/three tenths faster than his pursuers.
“I’m happy but I don’t look it!” said a tired Sykes, sitting down after all the exertion of two races in sweltering Italian heat. “We kept things simple. The temperature changed and we understood where we needed to change in the set up. We got a good clean start, stayed out of trouble and the ZX-10R did everything that I wanted it to do,” he said.
“I’ve been trying to work on consistency throughout the weekend and in the race we were able to dig deep and we took one more step with that. The bike worked well.”
Asked whether two wins had been his aim coming into the seventh round of the season considering his injuries Sykes said he was always confident he could still challenge for victory.
“The target is always to win but if the race started to develop in a different way then I would have come up with a different plan. I felt good so I pushed it to the limit. I had to work hard, there were some corners where I had to compensate with the braking and delay how I got on the throttle. The guys gave me a good pit board and I was able to respond accordingly.”
Sykes finished the first race a comfortable five seconds clear of Baz and aside from Davide Giugliano leading in the opening laps of the second race after jumping the start, Sykes was never challenged and continued to lap the second race in the 1 minute 36 second bracket up until lap 19. Baz and Melandri’s times, meanwhile, dropped below that mark as early as lap twelve.
With much focus on Sykes’s growing rift with Loris Baz following their fallout in Malaysia, Sykes opted to play down the issues, admitting his competitive nature gets the better of him.
“I’ve been trying to keep my own business to myself,” he said. “I just try and focus on my own problems and the good thing is we understand where we are and where we need to be,” he said. “I surprised myself a bit. The lap times have been incredible, credit to Pirelli. It was a nice, enjoyable race.”
“I’m still disappointed at losing points but that’s me. I’m very competitive and sometimes very bitter. I’m always trying to succeed so it was a big shame. It’s still a disappointment but this weekend is helping put some gremlins to bed.”
With Sylvain Guintoli failing to finish either race at Misano on the podium Sykes extended his lead to 39 points over the
