Yamaha Factory Racing rider Ben Spies manages podium finish at Catalunya Grand Prix – MotoGP news
Yamaha Factory Racing rider Ben Spies scored his first podium finish with his team by finishing third at the Catalunya Grand Prix on Sunday.
Spies has moved to the Yamaha Factory team for the 2011 MotoGP season from Monster Yamaha Tech3 team. His shift took place after the veteran Valentino Rossi made his move to Ducati Team for the campaign.
Yamaha Factory Racing rider Ben Spies said, “This was a really important race. We needed to be there. We've just had some bad luck at the beginning of the season and this weekend was good. We didn't have any great luck, but just nothing went wrong.”
The Catalan Grand Prix was overall a progressive race weekend for the American rider and his team. The improvements paid off as he managed a third place finish closely on the tail of his Spanish teammate, Jorge Lorenzo who finished second. Lorenzo is leading
the championship table with a seven-point lead from Casey Stoner after five rounds.
Spies commented on the start of the Catalunya GP and said, “I made a really good start and just tried to hold the pace. We tried a big change before the race to the bike, on a set of forks I haven't run this weekend, so it took me a couple of laps to get
used to. After that I just settled into a pace. Dovizioso was there the whole race so I had to keep pushing and pushing.”
The American rider was not fortunate enough to debut his factory season on a good note. Except the season opener round at Losail, Qatar where he finished sixth, Spies collected two ‘did not finish’ statuses in the following rounds at Jerez and Estoril.
The fourth round at Le Mans was a little helpful for the American rider where he qualified at eighth place for the race and crossed the finish line in sixth place. It was his second sixth position finish after the Qatar round. With a third place finish in
Spain, he now stands at seventh place in the championship with 36 points.
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