Gordon Ritchie | January 25, 2018
Sykes Ends Jerez WorldSBK Test Fastest—After a tough 2017 watching his team-mate Jonathan Rea win his third WorldSBK Championship in succession, Tom Sykes has put a lot of thought into his overall approach to the 2018 season this winter.
Sykes feels a change of approach is needed to have season-long speed in 2018.
Topping the times after resorting to a qualifying tire on the final day at the Jerez tests, Sykes was also fast on a race tire set-up and for multiple laps on used rubber.
He has re-evaluated his own approach to racing a ZX-10RR which, by regulation, is nowhere near as radical and race-oriented as the Kawasaki that took him to the world championship in 2013.
Sykes explained his new mindset by stating, “Basically, accepting that I need to change. Like I keep saying to Marcel (Duinker, crew chief) and the boys, there are areas where I want to really attack the corner, and get the bike in there deep. But it just does not allow it. So really I am using this time to mentally prepare myself for the season. Not to rush in and really feel what the bike is doing underneath me, and that seems to be working.”
New rules and fewer revs for Kawasaki
The changes for 2018 mean that all Kawasaki riders have a season-starting limit of 14,100rpm, well down on the 2017 figure of over 15,000rpm.
“You feel the changes a lot!” said Sykes. “You have to be really swift on the gear selector otherwise you hit the limiter. We have lost a lot. But, I have to say I am sure that some of the other manufacturers are not too impressed with the result of the low RPM. We have always looked at moving the spread of power on this engine anyway. With the new regulations, it just means we were forced to do it. She pulls off the turn quite well and it seems to compliment our lap time – which is probably not the result anybody wanted.”
Sykes also thinks there is less push from the back end in corner entry, which is another potential area of advantage for 2018. “There is less, so it has helped us out in a couple of areas,” he confirmed. “So whoever did the moaning, I will have to thank them another time… It has really helped because I struggle a lot with push from the engine. So with less RPM going in, we are not perhaps quite as critical. It is all a package really and we have changed a lot on the geometry compared to last year. We have gone back to something that is a bit closer to a few years ago. It took a little bit of tuning-up and dialing-in, but I feel now we are close to the mark and really happy with our natural progression.”
Sykes will join many of his peers for more tests in Portugal on 28 and 29 January.
