Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

by **MadKaw** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 6:13 pm

Superpole Win For Sykes Makes It Three From Three
WSBK, Assen, Netherlands, 21 April 2012
Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team) secured the Superpole win at Assen and in doing so made it three pole positions in three attempts this season, after his previous successes in Australia and Italy. With the track not quite fully dry before Superpole started Race Direction declared a wet Superpole, which meant that instead of three Superpole session of varying durations, there were just two 20 minute sessions. The first was for the top 16 riders in regulation qualifying, with only the eight fastest in Superpole one going forward to the second and final Superpole competition. As the conditions changed the track was almost dry at the start of the opening session and even more so by the time Sykes set his impressive winning pole time.

On his Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R Tom passed into Superpole two and then set a blistering lap of 1’35.399, fully 1.033 seconds faster then his nearest challenger Jonathan Rea. Tom had been second fastest in combined qualifying, which was based on the best Friday lap times, after the final qualifying session earlier today was run in wet conditions.

Sykes paid tribute to his injured regular KRT colleague Joan Lascorz in his post Superpole comments and now aims to give everyone in the Kawasaki Racing Team some podium success to share in on raceday.

Team Pedercini Kawasaki rider David Salom made it into Superpole and finished up an impressive tenth on the 23-strong rider grid. His team-mate Leandro Mercado was 20th in combined qualifying in only his second ever SBK race weekend.

Tom Sykes: “It is a fantastic feeling and firstly I want to thank the Kawasaki Racing Team because they have done a great job. They have given me the correct package to let me win Superpole three times in a row, so hopefully we can make it last. On my last qualifying tyre today I had to dig deep because I saw I had some pressure from Jonathan Rea. When I crossed the line I was one second up and was very happy to have been that fast, because I thought I had improved only two or three tenths. For tomorrow I hope we can convert it - third time lucky. Obviously we had some bad news from the Imola tests so hopefully this is something for Joan to smile about and hopefully we can give him something to smile about tomorrow. I am looking forward to the race. Like my rivals have said already it is going to be tricky because of the expected weather conditions but it should be very exciting.”