Three times a pole-sitter at Portimao and twice a winner, Tom Sykes (BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) is ready to put his Portimao pace into practice this forthcoming weekend. The British rider, who was last on the podium in Portugal back in 2015 and wants to return as soon as possible.

Sykes’ season so far has been a journey, from struggling with straight line speed at Phillip Island to achieving his first pole position at Donington Park, just a couple of weeks after his first podium for BMW at Misano. Looking ahead to the end of the season and reflecting on the recent Portimao test, Sykes is buoyant and full of optimism.

“I am really looking forward to heading back to the Portimao circuit on the back of successful two days of testing there recently,” said the 2013 WorldSBK champion, who sits eighth in the standings with 170 points.

“During the test, we certainly gathered a lot of information for the set-up of the BMW S 1000 RR. Overall at the test, we tried various promises of the bike which we were not quite able to do so during the race weekends due to the restricted time. So, this has proven very, very good. We got some positive results, so hopefully we can pick up where we left off and try to keep our run of podium places on the go. The podium is certainly the target for the remaining races.”

Sykes has been a consistent performer in the Tissot Superpole this season, always starting from the first two rows for Race 1 and the Tissot Superpole Race. With three podiums so far this season, a win doesn’t seem too far away. Having finished down in 12^th in the test, Sykes’ performance isn’t reflected by his overall position.

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