Ben Spies leaves early with 'everything done'

Yamaha's Ben Spies concluded the second and final Sepang MotoGP test a satisfied man, having worked through a mammoth schedule of new developments despite rain interruptions on the first two days, then a fall at lunchtime on Thursday.

Spies concluded testing at 3:30pm, when he was fifth on the timesheets (he later dropped to eighth). However the Texan elected against a planned time attack.

“We got everything done,” said Spies, speaking at the back of the Yamaha Factory Racing garage while other bikes were still on track.

“We actually had a few soft tyres saved for the end of the day, just to see the potential of the bike for a fast lap, but after the crash it's not a wise thing. There was nothing really to be gained by doing it.

“But in terms of testing items we got everything done. We sorted through what's good, bad and what we need to re-look at in Jerez [at the final test]. So it's been really successful.

“Yamaha had a lot of parts. Every time we rode the bike it was different. So we never really worked on the setting of the bike.

“I think Yamaha will have a couple more new things for Jerez, but mainly we now know which engine, electronics and chassis we're going to use, which will become the base package that we'll fine tune.

“Now we just need to keep moving in a forward direction.”

Spies, like team-mate Jorge Lorenzo, suffered his accident around lunchtime on the final day. The #11 was testing different shocks at the time, the third of which caused his downfall.

“The third shock had a different weight balance and we think that's what caused it,” he said. “I knew the bike wasn't working as well, but I was still pushing to see if it would be better in other areas of the track. It caught me out.”

One of the bigger MotoGP riders, Spies nevertheless said he has had no fuel consumption issues - the 21-litre limit remaining unchanged this year despite the 200cc increase in engine capacity.

“We haven't had to worry about fuel consumption. We're looking good with that,” he said.

Spies would finish the second Sepang test 0.959sec behind Honda's Casey Stoner and 0.6sec behind the top Yamaha of Tech 3's Andrea Dovizioso. Lorenzo was fourth quickest.

The Jerez test will take place from March 23-25.