BMW WSBK Rider Tom Sykes In Hospital After Crash In Barcelona

The BMW Motorrad WorldSBK team had a pretty rough time at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya over the weekend of September 18-19, 2021. Rider Tom Sykes was involved in a serious crash on lap two of Race Two, which also involved Puccetti Racing Kawasaki rider Lucas Mahias.  

Directly after the crash, Sykes was examined at the medical center at the track facility. They determined he had a concussion, so he was sent off to the hospital for further checks to make sure that nothing more serious was going on. After Sykes fell, he was hit by another rider. The race was red flagged and then restarted later on.  

Prior to that crash, BMW riders Michael Van der Mark and Tom Sykes had already had a less than ideal morning. During the Superpole race, Van der Mark went down on the first lap, which shunted Sykes off into a nearby gravel trap. Both riders were thankfully uninjured, but had to return to the pits. Even though the race was later suspended and restarted due to a different incident, neither rider could rejoin the restarted race due to regulations.  

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“First of all, our thoughts are with Tom today. He has gone for further checks at Barcelona Hospital. He has been talking and is conscious which is a good sign so we will wait for further information, however this really casts a shadow over the whole day,” BMW Motorrad WSBK team principal Shaun Muir said in a statement. 

“In the Superpole race, both riders equally went down from an accident caused by Mickey [Van der Mark], which he has sincerely apologized to the team for. In the second feature race, I think Mickey struggled to get his tyre to work for him very early in the race but come the final third, he had pace which was getting him where we expected him to be sort of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth position, but by that point it was too late, so it’s a scant reward for his weekend’s work in 9th position. Now we will draw a line under Catalunya 2021 and move forward to Jerez. But the main thing today is that we wish Tom a speedy recovery,” Muir concluded. 

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