Gordon Ritchie | June 26, 2009
After a raft of mechanical issues have lost him a serious amount of points in the championship fight, Ben Spies took the step of bringing in another of his old AMA technical staff to help make sure his machine is 100 percent until the end of the 2009 season – and beyond.Spies answered the question of what changes had been put in place between Misano and this race, the matter of a few days, by first saying, “It’s frustrating sometimes… I made a couple of mistakes this year, but with the bike problems we have had, if we wouldn’t have had them, we would be really close [in the championship fight]. Maybe not be leading by a little bit. That’s racing, but it’s hard to say that all the time, or what seems like all the time lately, but that’s how it is…”When probed further about what would be changing, and how things couldn’t go on this way if Spies wanted to stay in World Superbike 2010, Spies said, “There is no real excuse. But we got to keep going forward and moving on… We have to move on and keep going and make it better for next year. I am already starting to think about the future, and making things better. My lead mechanic from the States, Gregg Wood, that was with me through my whole Superbike career, is going to be here today, and he will start with me for the rest of the season. It’s an important thing, and I am not saying it is going to fix anything overnight, but what I do like about this team is they willing to try and do anything – they believe in me and I do believe in them.”A lot of the things the team is just perfect with, and in some ways not bad, but just traditional, traditional Italian. Talking with Maio they know and they want to try different things. That’s going to be one change, but nobody is leaving the team or anything, but I am basically bringing somebody in just looking at stuff and maybe nothing changes, or even some small things change, and it becomes better. So that is the first step for the future for this year and maybe next year – trying to make things better. I have showed to the team that through the problems we have been having I have still shown up to the track and given in everything I have had tried to come back and staying positive. It is a long championship.”Wood was working for Yoshimura Suzuki on Blake Young’s team. He did not have a contract with the team, however.
Gordon Ritchie | World Superbike Editor
You may not understand Ritchie and his Scottish accent if you had him on the phone, but you can definitely understand what he writes as our World Superbike editor.
