With Sykes having taken his 35th career Superpole success just a few hours before the first race of the Donington weekend he lined up at the head of the front row, with fourth place qualifier Rea one row behind.
From the flag the action started early, with a few hard passes being put in during the first few laps, helping to leave Sykes fourth on lap two. Rea was up to second by lap seven but he ran on, for the first time, after finding a false neutral.
As the race progressed Sykes moved forward, despite having some small issues of his own to deal with, and ended up passing long-time leader Davide Giugliano on lap 17. He fought with the Italian rider for a while but extended his pace to win by a clear 2.889 seconds after 23 busy laps.
This was Tom’s seventh straight win at Donington and his third race victory of the season on the new model Ninja ZX-10R.
Rea ran out third, 9.808 seconds down, after his earlier issues and despite having the pure pace to challenge all the way to the flag.
With championship second place runner Chaz Davies crashing out of the race, Rea has a 58 point lead as he approaches tomorrow’s second day of Donington race action, while Sykes is still overall third and now only three points behind Davies at the halfway point of the year.
The second Donington 23-lap race is scheduled for 15.00 local UK time on Sunday 29th May.
Tom Sykes stated: “I have no real reason why I have won so much at Donington Park but what makes it more rewarding today is that I had to fight for it. I got a good start but a couple of the guys really made some strong passes to get in front. I am sure if we could have had some good steady laps at the beginning we also would have had good pace - but I am happy that I had to fight for it. I had some issues myself from the bike, which is unusual, but the good thing is that even considering these I dug deep and came out with 25 points. After six laps I could understand what was going on and I thought it would be very difficult, maybe impossible to win. We kept plugging away and I had to manage the bike a bit differently in some areas to compensate. Overall I am really happy to win and the plan tomorrow is to be stronger, safer and more consistent.”
Jonathan Rea stated: “My bike felt really good in the beginning of the race but near the end I started to lose some grip from the rear and suffered a little bit turning into the corners. I found neutral five times in the race and two times at the final corner I ran onto the gravel, and then had to turn around on the access road. Also in the Melbourne loop I used all of the track surface just to stay on the track. It was affecting my confidence a little bit so I started to roll of the gas and make sure I did not make any more mistakes. It is frustrating for me because at some points of the race I could see my pace was even faster than the front two guys. I was closing in on them after my first mistake. I consolidated my podium so I am happy for that but a bit frustrated that we could not fight at least Tom and Davide at the front at the end of the race.”
Anthony West (Pedercini Racing Team Kawasaki) placed tenth after a tough but rewarding race, with returnee from injury Roman Ramos (Go Eleven Team Kawasaki) also scoring points in 13th place. For the second time in 2016 Dominic Schmitter (Grillini Racing Team Kawasaki) took a point for 15th place. Saeed Al Sulaiti (Pedercini Racing Team Kawasaki) was 17th and Sheridan Morais (Grillini Racing Team Kawasaki) was unable to race through injury.