RRX: Are you still enjoying life over here?
Yeah. I went back after Le Mans, to kind of do some physio stuff with my ankle back home. I wasn’t going to go back, but ended up going back. I stay over here until Laguna, then I’ll be back home for a couple of weeks after that. During most of the race season, I’m here, and it’s good. I’ve got a lot of friends here now, some training partners. I know where the food is. I haven’t really learned the language yet, but I’ve picked up so many words, and when I look at a menu or drive around, it’s amazing what I’ve actually learned in a year. It takes time, but it feels like home now. I don’t get homesick. I like it, and I’m definitely going to be here for a while. When I go home, there’s little things here that I miss—kind of the simplicity part of it. Sometimes that’s what you
don’t like when you’re here, but when you’re away from it, you’re like, Man, it is a pretty simple life there. Everything’s slow, and there’s not a whole lot of stuff to do, compared to America. It’s 50/50. I’d never retire here—home’s home, but it’s good during the career to spend 50 percent of my time here. It gives you that balance of learning a lot and living a lot of different things, and just kind of relaxing.
You’re four races into your first full MotoGP season. What are your impressions so far?
Ben Spies: It’s going okay. I think we definitely had a rough couple weekends at Jerez and Le Mans. The Qatar race was good. Basically, everything other than the two bad results we had has been good—the practice sessions, the warm-ups, having to learn the tracks, all that stuff. Mugello went good having to learn a new track and finishing second there. With how I was feeling with the bike, I didn’t end the race totally happy. I was kind of a little frustrated with how the bike was working, just mainly due to little setup time. I was happy with seventh there. It hasn’t all been bad; it’s just been tough with this learning this many tracks at the beginning, in the part of the year when you’re trying to get some confidence rolling. Now we’re starting to go to some tracks that I’ve been at, and I’m looking forward to that. It’s been a struggle—not learning the tracks so much, but basically losing an hour of bike setup to having to learn the tracks. The first hour, we don’t even touch the bike, because I’m trying to figure out where I’m going. It’s been tough, but I think all in all, other than the two races, everything’s been going pretty much right on plan.
There were a lot of predictions about you being the fifth alien, but none of them came from you.
No, because I knew, coming in. I said if we can consistently be in the top-ten, top-eight finishes, I’d be super happy with that. The two finishes we’ve had have been in the top eight, and I’ve been happy with them. I think winning races and finishing on the podium is out of reach this year, and I knew that all along. When we go to Laguna Seca, Indy, Assen—some places I’ve been to that I’m comfortable with, if the bike’s working good, I think on a very good day, it is possible to be in the top five, but not on tracks I haven’t seen before. For how the season’s going, I think for a rookie season and learning half the tracks, I’m pretty happy with it. It’s going exactly the way I kind of wanted it to go. A lot of other people wanted me to be on the podium and all this stuff, but it’s a learning curve.
Is the level of the bike what you expected?
The bike’s good. [
Pause] We don’t know the differences, obviously, to the factory bikes—how much there is to be gained, what the actual differences are. Whatever I get, I just ride as hard as I can and try to get the best result that we can, but I’m also not blind to think if I jumped on Rossi’s or Lorenzo’s bike, I’m going to be running their pace. If I got on their bike, I think the lap time would improve slightly, but it’s not going to be the thing that would make me be on the podium. I know that, and that’s important to know, but the actual differences—yeah, there are definitely differences, but what they are exactly, I don’t know.
Are you looking forward to having neutral territory at Silverstone?
Nobody knows it, and we don’t have any data from it, so I would think it’s got to be better for me in general. I’m not saying the result’s going to be any better, but on paper, it should be easier than basically this whole year’s been.
How are you finding live with the team?
It’s good. It’s definitely helped make my transition into GPs a lot easier, hanging out with Colin, and I’ve been hanging out with Casey a little bit. We try to have dinner a couple nights when we’re at the races. It’s definitely a weird combination. Basically, 98 percent French and 2 percent Texan, so it’s a little different, but it’s good. Me and Colin are enjoying it. We’ve had some frustrating weekends, just struggling with some things on the bike that we both, at the end of the day, are kind of shaking our heads at. We don’t really know what’s going on, because the bike we’re on is essentially the same bike he rode last year, and he’s having some problems they didn’t really have last year. We’re
both having them, so that’s a good thing and a bad thing, because we really haven’t had the greatest start of the year—me or him. We’ve been struggling with some little, stupid stuff, but it at least makes me feel better—and probably him too—that we’re both struggling with the same stuff, and we’re very close on the track and things like that. It’s been a little bit of a struggle at the start of the season, but hopefully it’ll get better.
This is the first time you’ve been on a satellite team in a long time.
It’s good, because we have the normal team, but then you have your Japanese engineers that are in the back, helping over everything. It’s a solid team. For being on a satellite team at this time of crisis with the economy, I think they’re doing a good job—as good as they can. They probably wish things could be a little bit better in some areas, but I think that’s the way it is for everybody. They’re a solid team, they’ve been around for a long time, and Herve [Poncharal] knows what he’s doing. It’s good.
Can you comment on the story that recently came up concerning your management?
Yeah, I’m sorry, but as you can probably understand, I can’t really comment on it at this time.
Understood. What do you think Rossi being hurt means for the silly season and for the series?
I think it slows down the silly season quite a bit. You never want to wish any bad luck on anybody—especially an injury like that, because I’ve been hurt bad enough that I know that kind of pain, and it sucks. You don’t want anybody to go through that. It changes the dynamics of the championship. When’s the last championship we haven’t seen Rossi contend for—or miss a race? It’s hard, but I think in some ways, it makes the racing more interesting. From just the way the paddock feel is and things like that, with him not being there, it kind of gives some changes for some other things to happen. It’s definitely going to change it. The feel was already different at Mugello; it was a little bit more mourning, obviously, right then. It’s not good for the championship, and it’s not good for Yamaha, but in some ways, it kind of opens some things up to let other things happen. Valentino has so much control over the series—not in a bad way, but he has so much of a presence, that this just kind of changes the way some thigns happen. We’ll see, but hopefully he gets better quick, because it’s a shitty thing to happen, and it’s a lot of pain. As soon as the crash happened, I came in and took my helmet off. We were looking at some data, and they threw it on the TV, and I looked up and could actually see it bent, I could see that basically he was kind of going into shock. He was shaking—not just in pain, but his body was going into shock, and that’s a bad feeling. Nobody knew what it was then, but I could tell in looking at it, from what I’ve went through, that he was not going to be racing for a while—he was hurt bad. It’s not a good feeling; I really didn’t even want to go back out for the rest of the session. It’s just one of those things—cold tires, and got caught out. It happened to me at Le Mans, and I’m still suffering from it—healing as we speak. It’s just one of those things, where it’s not always the rider’s fault for that type of crash.
Since the crash, there’s been a lot of talk about the tires being slow to build heat, and losing heat easily.
It’s a reality you have to deal with, unfortunately, but it’s one of those things where the rider doesn’t go to the tire company and say, “Hey, it’s your fault,” because when the tires are on, they’re just incredible. But they are very strange to warm up, to get up to temperature. They lose temperature quick, but most of the big crashes I’ve seen are because they’re not up to temperature yet. With Valentino, they weren’t up to temperature yet; he definitely slowed down, because [Hector] was out on the track, doing his normal thing about following people [
laughs]. There’s a combination; he definitely slowed down, but I don’t think the tire—with the way the track conditions were—I don’t think they were super up-to- temperature. It’s actually something we had talked about that morning. There’s a picture of us on
Road Racer X talking; we were talking about cold tires, because he asked me how my ankle was. That happened ten minutes later, and it just sucks. It’s one of those things where it’s not always the rider’s fault, it’s not the tire’s fault, but some of those crashes, the rider really didn’t do anything wrong to flick himself that hard. It’s a touchy subject, but it’s one you’ve got to live with. We saw Casey at Valencia last year—he shouldn’t have crashed. It’s just a weird, strange thing, but it’s the same for all the riders. It’s just how you manage it.
When Valentino got hurt, your name came up right away as a potential substitute rider.
Realistically, I don’t think it can happen, just because of the way the rookie rule is written. On paper, I don’t think it
can happen, so I don’t think there’s much to be said on it. I think I was probably one of the first options, but they want me to continue to learn, continue to progress in the environment I’m in. I don’t know who’s going to be on it, but it’s a sensitive subject—who gets on that bike, because it’s Rossi’s bike. At the end of that day, that could be a problem too. Some riders seem like favored being on it, and some riders seem like not. That’s a tricky one, and not just in that way, but in that he’s one of the greatest ever, so it’s not an easy task to go fill, even if you’re just filling in. It’s a tough one for Yamaha to decide on and act on.
LIEN
Re : Ben Spies -
16/02/2010, 20h56
,alors je sais pas si elle est sur une béquille mais quand meme,debout a coté il a les épaules au niveau des bracelets 
Mode linéaire
