Spies scoops up provisional pole at Infineon

Spies scoops prov pole at Infineon

(AMA Pro Racing Release) Yoshimura Suzuki’s defending AMA Superbike champion, Ben Spies, scooped up the provisional pole at Infineon Raceway on Friday afternoon with a blistering 1:34.991 lap. While he was nearly a second faster than the lap record he established while claiming the pole here last year (1:35.893), Spies was actually on pace to go even quicker on his following circulation before crashing his GSX-R1000 in Turn 9 as the session expired.

Spies was no worse for wear following the low-speed spill, however. He was quickly back up on his feet and grabbing a lift back to the pits from teammate Tommy Hayden. Afterwards he commented, “We just put the softer race tire on and tried to do a couple good laps. We did a ‘34.9, saw that when I crossed the finish line, and I knew I had boggled that lap up a little bit, so I wanted to at least get one clean. We were on our way to one -- and on the splits I’d taken two-tenths off of that previous lap.

“It’s a little frustrating. It’s my fault. Knowing that the wind is pretty bad, we were getting a real big tailwind on the braking zone. I just drove it in a little bit deeper, and the only thing that we changed on the whole bike that it ended up losing the front was I put a softer front tire on that I never run. I thought that would’ve gave me a little more grip, but it might have been just my bad. But that’s the only thing we really changed, and ended up losing the front. Just a little bitty crash; it wasn’t a big deal.”

Asked whether or not is was especially important to successfully defend his ’06 double at Infineon Raceway where he was at his most dominating last season, Spies explained that while it, there’s still a long season ahead regardless of this weekend’s outcome. “Yeah, it’s important, but it’s really early in the season. Everybody is asking why I’m not riding as aggressive as him, and all that kind of stuff, and I’m just trying to not make mistakes (even though I just did). It’s a long season, and we’re not even halfway there yet. It’d be nice to go out and win both races like we did last year, but if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. It’s not that big of a deal this weekend, but we’re going to go out and we’re going to try and win both races.”

On Sunday the Texan will attempt to lock down his fourth consecutive pole of the season.

Provisional Front Row Quotes:

Second-placed Mat Mladin (1:35.128): “I’m not real interested in qualifying, to be honest. I’m more interesting in getting a good set-up.”

Third-placed Eric Bostrom (1:36.250): “We were just working on the set-up most of the time, and we seem to be getting it set now. The wind really sucks you in on Turn 8 and part of Turn 3. You are used to having that ‘airbrake’ to help slow you down, but it just isn’t there now. We’re going to go home and do some homework -- we’ll see what we can come up with.”

Fourth-placed Aaron Yates (1:36.790): “It was a good run. We’re working to make the bike better. The top two guys are fast and we want to get up there with them.”