Ben Spies relaxed about MotoGP future

The American's factory Yamaha contract is up at the end of 2012, and his future has been subject of intense speculation amid a difficult season. Spies is currently only 11th in the world championship, with just one top-five finish to his name.

Yamaha recently announced that it would retain Spies' team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, putting more pressure on the other riders at the centre of the 'silly season', but Spies says he is sanguine about his situation.

"It's normal. It's racing. As soon as Jorge signed, everyone was in a big scramble, and that's how it works," he said.

"All I can do is worry about me and my bike and my results. Whatever happens, happens, and I'm calm about that. We'll go about our business and get everything done, and let the cards fall where they fall."

With three races in as many weekends looming as MotoGP heads for back to back races at Assen, the Sachsenring and Mugello, Spies believes the next stage of the season offers him a chance to revitalise his campaign - especially as he showed better pace at Catalunya and Silverstone.

"Hopefully we can take some of the confidence we did get from Silverstone and apply it here and keep going for the three weeks," said Spies.

"It's an important part of the season. It can make up for a lot of the lost ground. Generally feeling confident and being able to attack these three weekends is really important."

Spies took his sole MotoGP victory at Assen last season, and admitted that should he win this weekend, he was likely to kick himself for having not delivered sooner.

"Taking a victory this weekend after the way the season's been going, I'd almost be a little bit pissed off because it hasn't been happening recently, not any good results," he said.

"It's not bad luck, there have been a lot of little things going on, but that's the way it goes. You've got to remind yourself of the last 10 years you've been racing and what you've done, and things don't always go to plan. Sometimes you have a bad season, sometimes you have a bad three races.

"The last three or four weeks, we've been going better and getting a lot more confidence with the bike. The last race at Silverstone was pretty good. We faded a bit at the end, but the beginning was good and the bike felt good.

"Now we're back here, which is one of my favourite tracks. I look forward to this weekend and I'm just trying to get another good result and build my confidence up."