British Superbikes Almeria test: Tom Sykes biding time with his Suzuki

MCN caught up with Rizla Suzuki new boy Tom Sykes before his second day out on track at Almeria in Spain, and he spoke of the importance of looking at the long run.

Sykes said: “I’ve been jumping off one bike and onto another to iron out a few things so I’ve not really got into a rhythm of things as such and am definitely looking forward to making some inroads over the next week.

“We’ve done loads of testing dialling the bike and getting myself on form, and we’ve definitely got a few base settings to work from, but after day one we played it steady and we’ve got a good ground to work from for the next two days.”

Tom Sykes scored an unofficial best of 1:38.8 on day one but said after just one day people shouldn’t read too much into lap times.

“I feel comfortable on the bike but yesterday showed I’d been quite steady but we won’t read into that too much,” said Sykes.

“I’m not fussed about the times – if you see me coming off a lot of the corners you’ll see how steady I’m going.

“The bike is a year old but we’ve done a lot of changes to suit myself, mostly the feel of the geometry of the bike and changed the suspension to Showa and the engine management has changed a lot to how I ride the bike so it isn’t the same as last year’s.”