As he looks to keep the 2016 WorldSBK title fight alive on Saturday Tom Sykes (Kawasaki Racing Team) will be striving for improvements on the second day of the Gaerne Qatar Round.

Under the floodlights at the Losail International Circuit on Friday the Yorkshireman found himself in the unfamiliar territory of 13^th place on the timesheet in FP1 with a best lap of 1'59.954, which left him over 1.7s off the pace set by his teammate Jonathan Rea in that session.

Sykes is relying on mistakes or misfortune for Rea if he is to have any chance of taking a surprise title win at the season-concluding #QatarWorldSBK round this weekend and although he improved to 1'58.415 in FP2 – taking him up into the top ten on his Kawasaki ZX-10R – he knows there is plenty of work ahead on Saturday.

Reviewing the action on Friday Sykes commented, “on paper ninth looks a lot worse than it is, but for sure we lost a lot of time and almost had a crash on the entry of T2 when we had a brake issue. We were a bit lucky with that. We got the general set-up workload done, which was good, but we ended up not being able to use two fresh tyres to go for a fast lap. I put a big flat spot on the rear tyre when I ran onto the gravel and my best lap time was with an already used front. I was making the times with seven laps on the rear and 18 on the front, which is not bad. We have done a lot with the general feeling of the bike and components so I feel that now we have the chance to put everything together for Saturday.”