Fall aggravates shoulder injury for Spies

Small crash hindered Spies on final day

Thursday, 28 February 2013

Ben Spies was already recovering from a shoulder injury when this week’s Sepang test began, having crashed in the 2012 race event at the same circuit. The American has now revealed to what extent a fall on Wednesday caused further irritation.

After contesting the last two MotoGP™ seasons for the Yamaha Factory Racing team, Spies is with the Ignite Pramac Racing Team for 2013. His Wednesday accident at Turn 1 may have been relatively small, but the effects were strong enough to force the American to leave the circuit early in order to rest.

“I made a small mistake yesterday which dug my elbow into the ground,” he revealed in a video interview with motogp.com. “It was an easy crash but it upset my back and shoulder a little bit, so I had a few spasms yesterday and couldn’t do a whole lot of riding.”

Back on-track today, Memphis-born Spies finished 14^th for the day and 16^th overall, half a second slower than new teammate Andrea Iannone on the Energy T.I. Pramac Racing Team machine.

“Anybody in our shoes would obviously like to be a little higher up the timesheets,” he continued. “Today we rebounded a little bit and got to put some laps in, but had a couple of little problems with the bike and lost the last hour.

“All in all, it wasn’t too bad and our quickest lap was actually set on old tyres – so that was good – but we’d like to be faster. For me right now, I just want to get back to 100% fitness and get used to the bike.”

Spies has won a single MotoGP™ race to date, when the 2009 World Superbike champion triumphed for Yamaha in the 2011 Dutch TT at Assen.