Spies bemoans Valencia result but praises Haga

Ben Spies remains confident he can claw back his 40 point deficit to Xerox Ducati man Noriyuki Haga.

Spies surrendered 30 points to the Japanese double Valencia race winner after he crashed out of race one and claimed second in race two.

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Speaking exclusively to MCN, Spies said:

“Every time I was on the bike I was giving it 100% and that’s all I can do, but I don’t want to take anything away from Nori because he rode two great races and didn’t make mistakes.

“We’ve got to put this behind us because I consider it a bad weekend for sure. I not too happy and we need to work on getting it back under control.”

The 25 year old Texan who had never crashed out of a Superbike race during his career until Valencia, is now targeting strong results at the fourth round of the championship at Assen on 26th April.

Speaking exclusively to MCN he said:

“We’ll go to Assen and move on and make the bike better. We’ve still got 22 races to run and Nori’s 40 point lead here is like a 15 point lead in AMA.

“Nori could go and win six straight, but if I win, even if he is second we’re going to be tied up pretty quick.

“I hate to give away points like this and I feel like I’ve just thrown away 15 points. Nori won the races in Valencia, but I should have been on the podium.”

Spies’ crew chief Tom Houseworth was philosophical about his riders crash and second position and remains confident that they can bounce back at the coming races in Assen and in testing at Monza this week.

He said:

“We just didn’t have it today, Nori was fast so the only thing we can do is come back at Assen.

“Ben was using the bike he took Superpole on so there wasn’t a big difference, but we might have got hung out with the higher track temperature in race two and we might have missed the set-up.

“I know he and Nori touched at the start of the race, which bent up his break lever, no big deal, a few little things – it was one of those days.

“The crash in the first race was a little bit us with a technical issue and a little bit him with the rider going for it.

“We’ve got a test at Monza this week hopefully build up a little bit of speed and then role into Assen”