Spies still looking
- From: 'the Wire' | Published: September 6th, 2009 - 7:58 am
Day two and the second qualifying session at the Nurburgring saw Yamaha World Superbike rider Ben Spies improve dramatically on his time of yesterday as he experienced the track in the dry for the first time. The American rider managed to finish the session in second position, less than one tenth of a second from leader Haga. The afternoon’s free practice was a frustrating one, a small crash at a difficult to access section of the circuit meant Spies lost over 20 minutes of valuable track time returning to the pit, leaving him with a less than perfect set up for the subsequent Superpole sessions. He made it through all three sessions, using a Qualifier in the second and third heats and will start tomorrow on the second row of the grid in fifth position.
Team-mate Tom Sykes continued to show his consistent fast form of the weekend in the second qualifying heat, the British rider ended the session in fifth place, less than half a second adrift of Spies. Sykes flew through the first Superpole session, again in fifth place, however a faulty qualifying tire in the second session left him unable to lay down a competitive time, and subsequently he will start on the third row of the grid in ninth position behind his team mate.
Ben Spies, Yamaha World Superbike Team (5th 1’56.489)
“I didn’t do us any favours by falling in the second practice and missing out on valuable track time, so we’re still looking for the right set up. We seem to be struggling a bit for grip on the bumpy sections and that’s what we’re trying to deal with. Combine that with the rain when we arrived and the lost time in free practice means we’ve only really had an hour of dry time here to find our set up. We’ve got the warm up and two races to figure it out so we’re on it.”
Tom Sykes, Yamaha World Superbike Team (9th 1’56.950)
“we’ve been up in the top five all weekend and feeling really good in the dry and the wet but when it came to using the Qualifier in the second heat of Superpole it felt wrong. It felt like a used race tire when I went out, so I thought I’d try another lap. I improved on my lap time but it didn’t feel remotely like a Qualifier tire. On the third lap I was undecided whether to come in or not and couldn’t see a timer anywhere. By the time I got back it was too late to get out again which was really frustrating. It’s a shame as I certainly felt like we could have been front row tomorrow for the start. Still, we’ve got a good race pace and it’s a long race so we’ll see what we can do.”
Massimo Meregalli, Yamaha World Superbike Team Manager
“the rain yesterday really made our approach to the weekend complicated. We still have the warm up tomorrow to try some settings and tonight we will see if we can find any other improvements on the bike as well. I think we can still make a good challenge tomorrow. We’ve lost nearly three sessions this weekend which means it is normal not to have the bike set up ready. I feel really sorry for Tom, he’s been having a really good weekend and been consistently fast in all the sessions but he had a rear tire that didn’t work properly and unfortunately stayed out one lap too long so didn’t have the opportunity to change to his second Qualifier tire. I think he will have a good race tomorrow as he’s shown a really good pace all weekend.”
