After four rounds, Tom Sykes is BMW’s best in the Superbike World Championship. He currently occupies the seventh position with 89 points – 28 of the podium in the standings – having already earned two podiums in addition to being a constant presence in the top ten of the races.
On the championship website, team director Shaun Muir made a few comments regarding the british veteran: ‘Tom knows where he’s been in the past in terms of results and he’s an excellent test rider, he knows the direction he wants to go – slightly different than Michael [van der Mark], Jonas [Folger] and Eugene [Laverty]. But nevertheless, when Tom has everything working correctly, he gets good results. Overall, I think Tom will admit that he knows where he wants to be’.
Stressing that Sykes has the natural expectations of someone who has been champion and has won races, the official admitted that the team needs to give him a constant bike between circuits: ‘He’s a winner, a world champion, his expectations are to be on the podium All the weekends. And to do that we have to give you a bike that moves from circuit to circuit – where you can hit the track in FP1 and be very fast without changing the bike too much from the previous round. And we saw that this doesn’t happen, from Misano to Donington it was clear that the bike was very different’.
In any case, Muir understands that it won’t be long before BMW is constantly fighting for the podiums, at a time when the goal is not far away: ‘Overall, in terms of results we can’t be too disappointed: we’re not very far from the top six. Tom and Michael are punctually close to the top three. It doesn’t take much in the next step of development to fight for the podium every weekend’.
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