Spies incorporated into Tech 3 team on Monday

After his impressive wildcard ride to seventh place on Sunday at Valencia Ben Spies tested for the first time with his new team Monster Yamaha Tech 3 on Monday at the Ricardo Tormo circuit, getting his first sample of life in the pit-box of Herve Poncharal’s successful satellite squad, alongside fellow Texan Colin Edwards.

Indeed, such was Spies’ immediate pace on James Toseland’s 2009 Yamaha M1 the American’s best time was the sixth quickest on Monday. Spies was only 0.8s behind fastest rider Casey Stoner’s test pace and was a massive 0.6s better than his own fastest lap in Sunday’s race.

The 25-year-old completed 50 laps making it a positive and productive first day with Tech 3. He commented afterwards, “I was obviously on a different bike but with the same setting that I raced on and it felt good. I improved on my qualifying time so it was a positive and productive day. I really just focused on doing a couple of things different with my style and in the last two sessions I tried to do some things very different and it worked.”

“I was slowly able to chip away at the lap times, so it is encouraging that I'm getting faster and more comfortable without even making any changes to the set-up of the bike. We'll make some changes to the bike tomorrow, more for me to see what I can feel, than looking for big improvements.”