Ben Spies still expects to be a factor in Qatar Grand Prix despite crashes
Ben Spies is confident he will be able to join Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo at the front in Sunday's Qatar Grand Prix, despite his crashes so far this weekend
The American fell in both practice and qualifying, but still put in a lap good enough for fourth on the grid. Lorenzo took pole, with Cal Crutchlow's satellite Tech 3 Yamaha in third.
"We were on a good lap until the crash, I just lost the front," said Spies. "I've been complaining the last couple of days that the front end just didn't have the right feeling that I wanted."
Spies was dragged along with his bike for a while in the incident before being able to release himself.
"As I was trying to get away from the bike when I was sliding something got caught up and I went with it," Spies said.
"I was looking at the front wheel for a while and thought about trying to get back on when I couldn't get away from it!"
He now hopes that the team can hit upon a solution for his front-end feel issue in the race morning warm-up.
"We'll try to make the bike better now, I know if we can fix it we can be up front," Spies said. "The M1 is clearly going round the track fast and I feel good on it apart from that. We've got some good ideas to try in warm up so we'll see."
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| Series | MotoGP |
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