AMA SuperBikes: Daytona Qualifying

Spies ends fractions short in qualifying

(AMA Pro Racing Release) Defending AMA Superbike champ Ben Spies will open his Daytona race and series title defenses from the second spot on the front row after narrowly being edged for pole by his Rockstar Makita Yoshimura Suzuki teammate Mat Mladin.

The Texan made a valiant effort late to overtake his fierce rival but came up just over two tenths short of the former Cagiva 500GP pilot’s blistering lap, lapping at 1:35.967 to Mladin’s pole-winning 1:35.760.

Mladin and Spies were the only men to dip into the ‘35s, and no doubt will be hoping to break free early in Saturday’s final and turn it into a two-rider affair.

While the two-time series king will now shift his attention to Saturday’s race, Spies was clearly less than satisfied after missing out on the pole point on Thursday. Last season the 23-year-old walked away with every possible point in the season opener (in both Superbike and Superstock), which ultimately proved vital to his successful title defense.

“Every point counts and that’s what we strive to do,” Spies said. “I didn’t work out today. It’s no big deal; we tried as hard as we could and had a pretty good session and that’s about it. I tried 100% and couldn’t get it done.

“Obviously the poles came into play last year, but like I said, we did everything we could today and we put in a tire that seems to be everybody’s favorite, and ours too. I started sliding around quite a bit and came in and the motor was leaking quite a bit of oil, but I don’t even think we had the pace to do it either way.

“Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get some stuff fixed and try to get me faster in a couple areas of the track that I’m slow in.”

Spies was in danger of being bumped down a spot or two on the grid late after his teammate Tommy Hayden and Yamaha USA’s Jason DiSalvo grabbed a tow from him late and parlayed the opportunity into a hot lap each.

Considering the limited amount of time left, Spies was unable to do anything but lead them around. “(Jason was there) and we had no choice but to go. All of the sudden Tommy was behind us too and we towed them around. It almost didn’t work out good -- he almost out-qualified us. He tried to return the favor to me but I kind of messed up that lap. Sometimes you don’t want to, obviously, lead a whole lot of people around. But the way it was, in that situation, we had to get that lap in and done. That’s just the way it is.

“We did everything we could today, but it wasn’t good enough obviously. I’m just going to keep working for Saturday.”