Huddersfield racer Tom Sykes is looking forward to the 2015 season hopeful of reclaiming his status as World Superbikes champion.

The Kawasaki Racing Team pairing of Sykes and his new colleague Jonathan Rea, completed their last winter tests of the current year at Jerez de la Frontera in Spain, having ridden their Ninja ZX-10Rs in a wide variety of weather and track conditions.

New technical rules come into play for 2015 in the championship and the tests at Jerez concentrated on new settings and components that were initially tried at the recent tests at Motorland Aragon.

“We have worked on a long list of things we had to try,” said Sykes.

“It has been a five-day test, but unfortunately on day two I came down with some virus, which hasn’t helped the job.

“But we have done a lot of dry laps and understood what we needed to improve and where to go in the future.”

The original plan for the tests at Jerez was to run for the two days, sit out Wednesday, and then complete the tests with two more days on Thursday and Friday.

With occasionally torrential wet weather arriving at times, especially on Thursday, and the best weather coming along on Wednesday, that plan had to be modified and the team fielded both riders at some points on each and every day.

“In the dry we did not get to show our full potential, but in the wet I was happy with what we did,” said Sykes.

“We have really struggled in the past in the wet and this was the first time I was able to what I wanted to do with the Ninja ZX-10R in those conditions.

“For sure we are not on the perfect set-up yet but we are going in the right direction, because I went faster at this track than ever before in full wet conditions.

“We did a lot of practice starts as well, to evaluate some material for next year.

“In general it has been a very constructive test and one that has put us on the right path for continuing testing in 2015.”

Jerez was the final winter test session of 2014, with two more Spanish track sessions scheduled in the New Year, back at Motorland Aragon on January 19 and 20.