The broad-smiling youngster severely bruised his left thumb in a fast qualifying fall, leaving him twelfth on the grid, but rode through the pain barrier to record sixth place in his first BSB race for Suzuki's top team.
In the second race Sykes clashed spectacularly with Honda's Leon Haslam while running in fourth place - his bike then hitting Karl Harris and bringing out the red flags - but Sykes bounced back in style by leading the early part of race two, before rear tyre problems saw him slide spectacularly back to eighth.
"In race two I got a superb start from the third row of the grid and was up to fourth place. The bike felt really good as we had made some changes from race one. Unfortunately Leon Haslam changed his line in front of me and I had nowhere to go and ended up crashing heavily," he recalled. "I was a little battered and bruised but otherwise OK so I got out in the restarted race on my spare bike and started from the front row.
"I got the hole-shot and thought I could settle in but struggled for rear grip and the tyre started delaminating," he revealed. "The vibration got too bad so I dropped off the pace and just nursed it home for the points. I'm really gutted for my team as they worked hard this weekend and we didn't get the result we had hoped for."
"It's a shame about the incident with Haslam as I think we would have been on for a strong result," confirmed team manager Jack Valentine. "On the restart we stayed with the same rear tyre, Tom got the hole-shot and was having a really good ride. Sadly his rear tyre went off and he dropped down the order. We were hoping for a fourth or fifth place finish but it was so bad he slipped to eighth. We will re-group and fight back at the next round."
Sykes' team-mate and two-time Japanese Superbike champion Atsushi Watanabe finished his first ever BSB race in 17th and race two in 14th.
