Exclusive: Sykes – Back in British Superbikes and loving it

Tom Sykes is one of the few World Champions Britain has boasted in recent years but has eschewed life on the global stage to re-join Paul Bird in the Bennetts British Superbike series.

WSBK champion in 2013 together with 34 career wins and 51 pole positions, Sykes is coming home with an eye on winning the BSB title for the first time.

His decision follows a somewhat acrimonious departure from the BMW team but the opportunity to ride a brand, Ducati, which has always been the Huddersfield rider’s ambition. And that of his grandfather Peter Brook who financed his early years.

Sykes sat down with bikesportnews.com at the Snetterton test to give us the full skinny…

BSN: Tom, here you are at Snetterton which you must admit is a far cry from Portimao or Qatar or Phillip Island. But you must have had some alternatives. Those offers from World Superbikes or America clearly weren’t what you wanted. And what you liked about BSB was that Paul Bird, who you’d been with before, came along and offered you something pretty good.

TS: To cut a very long story short and, rightly or wrongly, in my opinion and a lot of others, I got information that I didn’t have the option of staying in World Superbikes in the team that I was with. So, rather like footballer, I was being put in the transfer window. I missed that and later discovered that if I’d been given the respect of knowing much earlier there were two factory teams who would have enjoyed my services .

But having said that, and accepting that things happen in life, I remembered what a very, very wise man once said to me, ‘It’s not how you get in the shit it’s how you get out of it that counts.’

So I am very fortunate to have had the interest from Paul Bird Motorsport and Ducati and as