Ben Spies undaunted by Honda dominance

Ben Spies reckons he’s not fazed by Honda’s domination of this week’s Sepang MotoGP test in Malaysia.

The Texan is confident in full race conditions that Yamaha’s factory YZR-M1 is competitive enough to fight for victory after he was the first non-Honda rider on the final timesheets in the Far East.

Spies ended fifth fastest overall with a best time of 2.00.678 leaving him just over a second adrift of Casey Stoner’s blistering pace.

The Aussie stunned the paddock this morning when he scorched to a best of 1.59.665 when track conditions were much cooler. That record pace, set on a soft compound Bridgestone tyre, was 0.5s faster than his best on day two and 0.6s faster than Valentino Rossi’s best in testing at Sepang last winter.

Spies finished at lunchtime on the final day after completing his testing programme, while he was also nursing a sore right elbow and suffering lower back pain after a crash at Turn 7 yesterday.

Despite the impressive pace of Stoner and Dani Pedrosa, who was the only other rider to lap in the 1.59 bracket, Spies said Yamaha’s pace on the hard compound Bridgestone rear tyre meant he was more competitive than the timesheets portray.

The 2009 World Superbike champion said:  “Our bike is quite quick on the hard tyres and if we lined up to race we’d have to use that. Looking at that aspect, it is very positive with the bike. The soft tyre didn’t help us here quite as much as it did the Hondas. That is not a bad thing. When you leave the test on paper it doesn’t look super great but if you look at what would happen in race set-up, we’re actually a lot closer to the front than it looks. If we went out on our race setting right now to race we’d have a really good shot in battling for the front. We’re not too far off and while the Hondas are obviously working pretty well at this test, we’ve only been to one circuit. I’m not too worried at this moment.”