With Race 1 at the #GermanWorldSBK round resulting in a podium finish for Tom Sykes in second place, whilst his Kawasaki Racing Team colleague and title rival Jonathan Rea crashed out, the Englishman provided a positive summary of proceedings in Germany.

Whilst Aruba.it Racing – Ducati rider Chaz Davies was unstoppable from pole and won by more than ten seconds at the Lausitzring, Sykes rode well from second on the grid to fend off any challenge from behind. The Kawasaki rider crossed the line a second ahead of Honda World Superbike Team’s former MotoGP™ World Champion Nicky Hayden, who was chasing him hard from third place.

Meanwhile, the day was not going so well for reigning champion Rea, who Sykes continues to pursue in the championship battle.

Rea had gone through Superpole 1 earlier in the day and would eventually qualify in sixth, but in the race the KRT man crashed out at turn 10 with 14 laps to go - and this would ultimately allow Sykes to close the gap to 26 points in the standings with seven races remaining in 2016.

“For the championship it is awesome, so we’ll see,” reflected Sykes afterwards. “Today it was tricky conditions, yesterday we had great pace when the track was bedded in nicely with a lot of rubber. But today it was fresh again and Chaz had great pace in this condition. There was no way we could fight with him. His bike was turning so well and he was riding really well, so it wasn’t to be. Second is acceptable. We had a lot of pressure from some guys, especially Nicky all race, so it was a really nice race from this point of view.”

Looking ahead to Race 2 on Sunday, Sykes added, “For tomorrow we need to try and improve. If we can close the gap to Chaz then that is fantastic but there are certainly a few little problems to iron out. Overall it is an acceptable Saturday. Now we can have a long time to socialise and find a better set-up for the ZX-10R for tomorrow.”