Yamaha‘s Ben Spies produced a stunning qualifying session for tomorrows Dutch Grand Prix, grabbing a front row start ahead of team mate Jorge Lorenzo. Spies was sitting at the top of the table for most of the session after finding a strong setup for the Assen circuit, but was beaten to the top spot by Marco Simoncelli, the San Carlo rider beating Spies’ time by just 0.009s.
“The best qualifying of the year so far, it was a good session for us.” said Ben after the session.
“We would have liked to get pole position but unfortunately on my fast lap Loris went down and there were a lot of yellow flags. I want to be a little bit upset but I want him to be ok a lot more than I wanted pole position. All in all it was a great qualifying, the bike is working really good, race pace is good so I'm confident for the race tomorrow. I don't know what kind of weather we are going to get so we'll see how it goes.”
Lorenzo will line up in 4th place after failing to get his factory M1 hooked up through the faster parts of the circuit. Lorenzo made many setup changes in the qualifying session, and also the mornings practice session, but was unable to improve his pace to match the leaders.
“Today has been a complicated practice and qualifying.” said Lorenzo.
“We made many stops in the morning session and in the qualifying. The most important thing is we can see that our closest championship rivals are pretty close but I know we still need to make a step forward to be better. I have had problems in the fast corners today, I didn't have so much grip on the rear so we have work to do for tomorrow. I'm very confident the team will do a good job to be ready to fight for the podium for the 50th Anniversary. Obviously the weather is not helping and we should be ready for both wet and dry conditions,” he added.
