Mount Vernon News

Spies takes provisional pole

LEXINGTON — Yoshimura Suzuki rider Ben Spies continues to show that he has no limit. The reigning AMA Superbike Championship Series champion proved that on Friday at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course by breaking the track record in provisional qualifying for this weekend’s two Wiseco Superbike 100s.

Spies clocked a time of 1:24.222, breaking the old lap record of 1:24.917. Teammate Mat Mladin would have broken it as well (1:24.493) if Spies hadn’t registered his run. Jordan Suzuki’s Aaron Yates and Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Jamie Hacking took the third and fourth spot with Eric Bostrom on his Yamaha YZF-R1 rounding out the five.

“Everything went pretty good in the session,” Spies said. “We started out on some old tires and tried to put as many laps as we could on them and got going a little better than I thought we would on those. I saw the race set-up was good. I came in and put new tires on and tried to put a little bit of a lap together. They were just race tires so hopefully we have a little bit something for tomorrow.

“The bike is working really good right now. We’ve just got to keep going. Every time we’re making improvements on the bike and I’m working on my bad areas on the track. As long as we keep doing that, it should be pretty good.”

The most glaring “bad area” on the track for Spies came in Turns 10 through 13. The third segment of the track was his slowest on nearly each lap he ran.

“I guess that’s where my bad area is,” Spies said. “There are a couple corners back in the last split. There’s just an area I need to work on and we know exactly what it is. If we can get the bike working for me a little better through there, it will be fixed.”

Much of the day’s on-track activities were marred with crashes, including one by Spies. Spies went down early, destroying one of his bikes as it slid across the track at the exit of the keyhole. Spies was able to hop off the bike and avoid injury.

“I really don’t know,” said Spies. “It was pretty awkward. I’ve never had that happen to me. I was going into Turn 2 still wide open on the gas, and leaned over, but not really hard. I just lost the front. I got it back and saved it. Just when I got back in control of everything, I saw I was about to enter the grass so I leaned over a pretty good bit. I decided then, if I went straight, there was a 50/50 possibility of me riding out, but if I didn’t and I fell in the path that I was going, there was a telephone pole about 150 yards out. I didn’t want to hit that, so I jumped off the back of the thing. … If there had been nothing there, it would have saved a lot of money, but I was interested in stopping a lot quicker than I could with the bike in the grass.”

MV Agusta’s Luca Scassa went down in the same area as Spies in a crash that saw his rear tire ripped clean from his F41000 as the rear wheel was broken in the impact. American Honda’s Miguel DuHamel and Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Roger Hayden were among the other high-profile riders to suffer spills on Friday morning. David Weber went down during the first qualifying session in the afternoon.

Final qualifying will take place this morning and Spies knows how important it will be for him to retain his position.

“It is down to that part of the season where we are looking for everything we can get,” said Spies. “We have definitely got to win some races to, hopefully, win the championship. It is a long ways out, but every time, if we can make a little bit of improvement, that’s what we need.”