Early Donington GSV-R800 impressions please Spies

Making his MotoGP debut this weekend with Rizla Suzuki at the bwin.com British Grand Prix, American star Ben Spies gave his initial impressions after Friday morning´s premier class FP1, having unsurprisingly finished bottom of the timesheet.

He may have been the slowest rider on track in his first World Championship session, but at a track he has never ridden before and back on MotoGP machinery first the first time since his only previous brief test session at Valencia last year, Spies´ best time of 1´31.807 was a creditable effort and left him less than three seconds off Casey Stoner´s timesheet topping pace.

Afterwards Spies told motogp.com, `It was fun! It was an eye opener being on the bike here for the first time, seeing the track for the first time and we are actually close than I thought we were going to be.´

`Competitively we are only a couple of seconds out and that´s good, so I think if it stays dry we can start picking up the pace. Hopefully we can get up there and race with the boys. Right now I am still learning the track, but we have to keep plugging away.´

Asked about the differences between the GSV-R800 prototype MotoGP race machinery and the Suzuki GSX-R1000 Superbike he competes on domestically in the AMA Championship Spies commented, `Everything is different. The MotoGP bike is easier to ride but obviously having the pace to go fast is quite difficult. The bikes are incomparable, they are completely different, so we just have to get along with this one and I think for the first session we did fairly well.´

Spies is lined up for further MotoGP appearances with Suzuki later this year, as a wildcard at Laguna Seca and Indianapolis, in his native USA.