Indy MotoGP: “I wasn’t fast enough for pole,“ admits Ben Spies

Ben Spies refused to blame a dislodged part on the fuel tank of his factory Yamaha YZR-M1 machine after he failed to secure a second successive pole position at Indianapolis.

The Texan said even without the late issue in qualifying he didn’t have the speed to overhaul the impressive pace set by Casey Stoner, who clinched his seventh pole position of 2011 with a blistering lap of 1.38.850.

Spies was a further 0.523s back with a 1.39.373 to claim only his third front row of the season and he said: “I had a couple problems where we definitely didn’t get the last three laps in, but we maybe had another tenth but we definitely didn’t have pole.

“It wasn’t a problem that held us back from doing anything special. Casey was just too fast.”

Explaining the issue that prevented him from bettering his pace in the final stages of a qualifying session run in hot and humid conditions, the 2009 World Superbike champion added: “I have a spacer on the back of my tank to try to keep me more in the back of the seat.

“It just came loose or I might have even dislodged it with my leg. It wasn’t a tragic event but we didn’t have anything left anyway.”

Looking ahead to the 28-lap race later on today, Spies added: “We need to get a good start and don’t make any mistakes in the first five or six laps. Hopefully we can put together a good race. The track is pretty tricky, especially when you start passing.

“We don’t really know yet what’s going to happen yet. But it’s been slowly improving, but I think we’ve kind of hit a plateau on the way the track is going to be. We just have to see what the other riders do and see how the bikes react after 12 or 13 laps with the tyres. I think the race could be quite a bit different than qualifying.

“I don’t think drastically, but I think it’s going to be pretty interesting. So we’ll just do the best we can and make the bike a little bit better. We need to find some more speed, but consistency is there, but we need to go a little faster if we want to hang on the back of Casey.”