Ben Spies backs Yamaha to close Honda advantage

Ben Spies is confident Yamaha can improve its factory YZR-M1 machine and bridge the gap to Japanese rivals Honda.

Although Spanish team-mate Jorge Lorenzo is currently leading the 2011 world championship rankings, Honda’s factory RC212V has won two out of the opening three races in comfortable fashion.

Lorenzo hasn’t yet finished lower than second but in Qatar he was beaten by Casey Stoner and last weekend in Portugal, he was defeated for the first time on the Estoril track since 2008 by a brilliant Dani Pedrosa performance.

Honda claimed four out of the top five places in the season’s opening race in Qatar and three out of the top four in Portugal.

But Spies, who has crashed out of the last two races, said: “I’ve said this numerous times this year because obviously the big talk is the Hondas in the top five and how good they’re going. But the positive thing is it’s a prototype class. Things can change overnight.”

“Things could change tomorrow and next year with the 1000s. We’ve seen manufacturers get on a roll. They start doing really good and then all of a sudden it changes. So that’s the good thing. We can always fix it, we can counter it and make it better. Right now they’ve (Honda) got their stuff together.”

“They’ve got good riders on the bike and they seem to be a little step ahead of us, but it’s not going to faze us and we’ll keep working 100 per cent and try to close the gap and try to pass it and see what happens.”

Explaining where the Honda is superior to its rivals at the moment, the Texan added: “They look like they fixed some of the stability issue and it accelerates hard and it’s smooth on the gear change. It’s doing everything good, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make ours do the same thing or better in the near future. Development is only a step away from making our stuff better and that’s what we look forward to.”