Sykes has continued the൲ good form he showed at Brands Hatch a fortnight ago with top five placings in both free practice sessions so far.

The ♍Yorkshireman managed to cut eight tenths ♓of a second from his first session time to finish session two just over a second away from quickest man Cal Crutchlow.

"We are just refining the set-up of🌟 the bike now," he said. "There are a couple of🔯 areas of the track I need to concentrate on to get more speed.

"I am happy with my🌸 speed in the first sector, but the second sector is where I am losing time, but we should be able to sort that.ꦏ"

Team-mate Watanabe is right in at the deep end and despite dropping his lap time after both session𒅌s by one and half seconds was just inside the top 20.

"൩I am still learning, circuit is very fast but layoꦿut is easy," explained the Japanese rider.

"My lap time improve but not my result, there are ꩵmany different lines here, I need to find Atsushi line!"

Team boss Jackᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ Valentine was happy with the reuslts of both riders, he said: "We've been working on tyre duration and have further improvements to make to help with that.

"I am ple🌠ased that both riders have shown improvement, lap times are good and we are right up there in the speed trap figures so it looks promising for tomorrow."