Benjol

2012  Yamaha Spies Skyes

 Yamaha World Superbike rider Tom Sykes gave a tantalizing glimpse of his race pace today in the first qualifying session at the historic Monza circuit. The British rider put in strong consistent fats laps for the duration of the session, ending it in second place, just over 0.3 seconds behind leader Michele Fabrizio. Sykes had been fast all day and had spent the morning and the qualifying session fine tuning the set up for the weekend’s racing. He finished the morning ‘s free practice session in third place, just behind his team-mate.

Ben Spies was in equally reliable form in the Italian sunshine, focusing on tyre wear and race pace he ran consistent laps all day, finishing the afternoon’s qualifying session in seventh position, less than 0.3 of a second off Sykes. The American rider spent the entire qualifying session on a single set of tyres to test the wear rate on the warm circuit. The morning’s free practice session saw Spies predictably fast on a circuit he’s coming to know well through testing, he finished the session second, less than 0.3 seconds behind the leader.

2012  Yamaha Spies Skyes

 Tom Sykes, Yamaha World Superbike Team (2nd, 1’45.758)
“A fairly decent day to day to be honest, we came here with a big change from the test we had here which has taken a fair bit of balancing but I think we’ve done it. Overall I’m very happy with my race tyres, we’re doing consistent fast laps over race distance so I’m confident in the team’s ability and tomorrow I think

2012  Yamaha Spies Skyes

we’ll come out even stronger. I’m going to have a good sleep tonight and come back tomorrow with a fresh head and be even better!”Ben Spies, Yamaha World Superbike Team (7th, 1’46.013)
“It was a really good session for us. We pretty much found our race tyres , we only ran one set for the whole session and put in some really good lap times.

2012  Yamaha Spies Skyes

2012  Yamaha Spies Skyes

2012  Yamaha Spies Skyes

2012  Yamaha Spies Skyes

2012  Yamaha Spies Skyes

We weren’t really worried about fast lap times today, we just wanted to get consistent laps so we should be good for Sunday. It’s an 18 lap race and our fastest lap today was the 22nd one so it’s looking good. The bike’s working really well so we’ll step it up tomorrow and see what happens.”