Ben Spies targets consistent victory challenge in 2012

Ben Spies is confident he can challenge for more podiums and victories in 2012 after a series of impressive winter testing performances on Yamaha’s new factory 1000cc YZR-M1 machine.

The Texan has been impressed with the performance of the new bike in test sessions at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia earlier this year.

And Spies, who unveiled Yamaha’s new livery in Jerez today, is now bullish about his prospects of adding to his single MotoGP victory, which he claimed in Assen last June.

Yamaha has already said it expects the former World Superbike champion to win at least two races in his second season with the factory team and he said: “The goal this season is just to be better in every way.

“It’s not just me challenging my team-mate, it’s me challenging everybody and racing for wins and to be at the front.

“We need to make another step and be more consistent than last year. I believe with the new bike we can do that and that’s the goal for this season.”

Spies played down the extra pressure of riding for a new contract in 2012 with all of the top riders negotiating new deals for ’13 and beyond.

He said: “If I have a two-year deal or a three-year deal it doesn’t really matter to me on how I think about it or how I race. I always try to do the best I can, if we do our job then we don’t have to worry about that.

“It’s one of those things that some riders worry about, some try to get long contracts so they can relax a bit. We just take it weekend by weekend and see where we end up and if we do well we don’t have to worry about the contract.”

Given his phenomenal success in American and World Superbikes, many expect the switch to a 1000cc capacity for 2012 to favour Spies and his riding style.

And he added: “The 1000cc suits me a little bit more than the 800; it’s more or less suited to the way I ride.

“Being a bigger rider, having more torque and the extra horsepower helps. Yamaha’s done a fantastic job getting us a base package. Pre-season testing’s gone well; we had some good times, so far so good.”

He also praised the work of Yamaha’s technical staff for the impressive performance of the YZR-M1 during pre-season testing.

“I think the Yamaha engineers have done a fantastic job. We’ve been to Sepang twice now and we’ve had a lot of parts to test. In the last couple of years it’s been about refining and tuning; now we’ve been actually testing new parts.

“We’ve reached some good solutions on different things on the electronics and the engine package and everything.

“They’ve been working quite hard over the winter, it seems they’ve brought some good things and we’ve also got another test coming up and we’ll have some more stuff to try so the bike’s just getting better and better every test which is good.”