The ninth round of the FIM Superbike World Championship, at Laguna Seca in the USA, saw Tom Sykes secure a podium place in race one and then follow it up with his eighth race win of the 2014 season, to extend his championship leading advantage once again. Loris Baz scored good points in each race and David Salom edged the EVO field in both races to put himself into an even more commanding lead in the EVO class.

After a long summer break, only punctuated by an official test session at Portimao between 21 and 22 July, the championship has its next appointment at Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, on September 7th.

Tom Sykes: “An eighth win of the year and one more point ahead in the championship. I knew this circuit would be difficult for us after last year, and then again after race one this year, so if you had offered me that deal on Saturday night I would have taken it. I thought my points gap may have been reduced after this round. In race two, with all the red flags and a short race it was a case of go big! I was motivated after race one and the bike was working well. We made changes for the first attempt at race two and we improved it, and then for the first restart it was better again and then for the final part we made another change and it was better again. I am very happy to have extended my championship lead and a great pleasure to take the win. I can go into the summer break very relaxed and very motivated.”

Loris Baz: “We have been strong in all rounds this season but this one was not the same. We saved some points and we are still not so far from the riders immediately in front of us in the championship. I am not sure what was wrong in race one but from lap two until the end I could not enter the turns, could not exit the corners the way I wanted. I cannot understand why because we have changed the bike settings a lot. I have tried to change my style but our result is very similar and it is very strange. In race two we found some things that worked better for us but not quite enough. It was a strange weekend but we made a recovery in race two and for sure it was better than race one.”

David Salom: “Two best classified in the EVO class but every race the competition gets stronger, so it is not easy. In the championship we have more points over our main competition going into the summer break. It was a very difficult weekend in practice here because I could not do one very fast lap but in race one I did not get a good start but I pushed the whole race. I needed to keep my concentration and winning was a very good end result for us. Race two was very short but we won our part of it again and now we have a bigger lead in the EVO class.”