Tom Sykes is satisfied the BMW Motorrad WorldSBK programme is moving in a good direction after securing his and the manufacturer’s best haul of points of the season in Jerez, but admits work needs to be done to understand its ‘little gap’ to the front.

A clean weekend for both Sykes and team-mate Markus Reiterberger with six solid finishes between them, Sykes matched his best result of the season with a fifth in the Superpole Race and consolidated it with a sixth and seventh in the more lucrative races one and two.

Keeping him on the cusp of the top six fight in the overall standings from his current tenth place position, Sykes was content with the weekend as a whole, even if Yamaha’s step forward ultimately left him mired amongst satellite riders mostly.

With this in mind, Sykes says there needs to be more work done to live up to its ‘high potential’

“All things considered, I really feel that we had a decent set of results. I’m a little bit disappointed with race two. I had a big moment in the fast last right hander. I lost the front with 170 km/h and the slide was over fifty metres so it was lucky that we were able to save it.

“I was able to catch up with the guys again but wasn’t able to pass. Overall, I think we had some decent results given where we are with the performance of the engine. We’re continuing to collect information for moving forward.

“So now my expectations are to keep the program developing towards the podium. That’s the ultimate target. When you look at the team, the manufacturer and the riders, we have high potential but obviously just for now we need to sit back and understand what we’ve got in this little gap and hopefully for Misano we can have another step forward.”