Spies second overall after tough Round 3

The Yamaha World Superbike team, which has made such a great start in 2009, had an unexpectedly tough raceday at Valencia. Ben Spies fell going into turn one on the ninth lap as he moved in to pass Max Neukirchner. Spies team-mate Tom Sykes fared better despite starting well back after finding trouble in Superpole, but he worked his way through the field to finish seventh. Race two saw Spies touch with Haga (Ducati) on the opening laps, bending his brake lever in the process. Despite this distraction he hung on for second in another impressive ride for the rookie of the year thus far.

For Sykes race two was a strong one despite his lowly starting position, passing Biaggi and new boy Hopkins in the process. Sitting up to avoid a late braking rider in front he ran wide five laps from the end allowing Biaggi back through and leaving Sykes in tenth position at the end of the race. Double Valencia race winner Noriyuki Haga still leads the championship, now by an extended margin of 40 points, but Spies is still a clear second. Sykes now has 47 points and sits eighth in the championship.

"Race one was unfortunate for me," said Spies: "I was pushing really hard to make up for an electrical issue going into the corner and crashed. We tried as hard as we could in race two to make it up. For the first couple of laps I had a couple of small problems and just didn't quite get rolling and by the time we got into second position I would have needed to be right on the back of Nori to challenge for it as he was riding at a very good pace. I guess I just didn't have the speed today. We'll come back at Assen and try to step it up."

"I got a good start in race one and got past a few in turn one," said Sykes. "It was a fairly decent race in the end, I think I could have gone for fifth but Leon Haslam had done a good job in the last few laps and made a big gap. I think we could have been in the top five otherwise. For me it was very difficult in race two. I had a good start, but going into turn two I was held and others came round the outside and went through. I worked my way back up to ninth and was looking good and catching up with Neukirchner but unfortunately got so close to Biaggi and just as we were going into turn one I ran wide a bit and let two or three past."

Source:
http://www.worldsbk.com

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