For Tom Sykes and Loris Baz the final seven rounds of the SBK season come laden with opportunity, starting with a circuit they have both just completed successful tests at Motorland Aragon.
The Spanish track will play host to a Superbike World Championship round for the second time when action gets underway with first practice on Friday 29 June but the beautifully-appointed circuit is already a preferred testing venue for many teams, including KRT’s official squad.
A planned two-day test for Sykes and Baz last week turned into a three-day test, to make up for an opening session lost to rain. Both Sykes (currently third in the championship) and Baz (about to ride in only his fourth ever SBK event) found improvements to their race distance set-ups and fully intend to put them to good use on raceday on Sunday.
Sykes has been a race winner in 2012 already, taking victory at the historic Monza circuit. At Motorland Aragon, a superb example of modern track design, Sykes is keen to get back to winning ways and peg back both the current championship leader Max Biaggi and second place rider Jonathan Rea.
Baz, still a teenager, has scored points in four races so far, with a personal best of eighth place, a feat he has pulled off twice already. He qualified for Superpole last time out at Misano and his immediate aim at Aragon is to get back into the top 16 qualifiers in regulation practice and join the Superpole fight one again.
Tom Sykes
“Aragon has a great track layout, one that I really enjoy riding on. We go there on the back of a test that we did there last week. It was very positive and unofficially it seems we were the fastest there. If we can carry that on into this and weekend I will be happy. We did a lot of laps in testing and I am confident we have closed the gap on the leader. All the testing we did at Aragon was definitely worthwhile and we confirmed two main things, each of which should make a difference to performance. It was good to focus our minds on the job in hand and make some real progress.”
Loris Baz
“I still have no definite, firm, objectives just to learn and improve on the bike. If I can have the same objectives as I had going into the previous round at Misano that would be good. If I can be in Superpole and score two top 12 or 13 results, I would be happy. Then after that, more can be better. We had a good base to start with in our recent tests but we made some good work to find more feedback from the bike and to feel where the limit is some more.”
