Motorcycling
Sykes struggles at Silverstone

LEAMINGTON’S Tom Sykes is known as the ‘Rain Man’ of the World Superbike paddock but he admitted conditions during his home round at Silverstone were too much for even him to handle.

The 26-year-old has time and time again proved his ability in the wet – round four at Monza a prime example as Sykes impressively won a shortened second race amid torrential conditions in Italy.

That race only lasted eight of the 16 laps and during round ten at Silverstone both scheduled outings were affected by rain once again with Sykes finishing the first in eighth.

And in an even wetter race two Sykes was seen clearly trying to alert officials to an oil spill on the final turn before his crash because of it on lap ten prompted the red flag.

That ended proceedings there and then and with the race counted back by two laps Sykes placed 12th – not that he was particularly happy about it nor was he about seeing his calls ignored.

“The general conditions in race two, I was very annoyed about, and for sure there was some contamination on the track,” said Sykes.

“It was very greasy and I saw it for two laps and had tried to get the race red flagged. Lots of people crashed and it was red flagged on the lap I crashed.

“Then after that lots of people have been put in the results from previous laps. It was very greasy and I was trying to get there attention.”

Sykes’ stature as ‘Rain Main’ was temporarily passed across the garage as fellow Kawasaki Racing Team rider Loris Baz won race one and was credited with second in race two.

Baz’s teammate Sykes started the second race from the pits after deciding to change to wet tyres, the only rider in the paddock to do so, with Sylvain Guintoli claiming the win.

Sykes still sits third in the overall standings with 222.5 points – something he is grateful for – and naturally he wants to forget about what happened at Silverstone as quickly as possible.

“It could have been worse but I am disappointed that we did not come away with more points when we could have done,” he added.

“We are still third in the championship so we will just forget this one and move on.”

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