Ben Spies Says… Nothing Really
Paul Carruthers | July 26, 2012
With Ben Spies announcing on his Twitter feed on Tuesday that he wouldn’t be back with Yamaha in 2013, today’s pre-race press conference for the Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca was met with high anticipation. The world was going to find out why he was leaving and where he was going. Or so we thought.
Turns out it was much ado about nothing as Spies remained tight-lipped and mum was again the word.
“I’ve known for quite a bit what my personal decision was and I just thought this was the right time to do it with the all the contracts with the other riders to be able to bargain with that,” Spies said. “That’s basically it. It was a litany of reasons behind it and to get back to stress free and do what I want to do and get back to finishing the out the season strong. The press release… everybody can see that and that’s what it says and that’s what it means. And that’s all that’s going to be said about it at this point until I’m ready to talk about the future. It’s not going to change anything for the rest of the races, especially Laguna. We’re going give 100 percent and do what we’re capable of doing and what the bike is capable of doing and for the team. Nothing changes from that standpoint. I just made the decision, something I’ve known for quite a while, but I just wanted to get it off my chest and get it out of the way. Now that I’ve done that, I feel like the weight of the world is off my shoulders and I can do what I set out to do and that’s what we plan to do.”
Later in the press conference, Spies was asked his future plans, but he shut that down as well.
“I’m not going to talk about it,” the Texan said. “Whenever I want to speak about it I will, but this weekend it’s not going to happen.”
Colin Edwards, meanwhile, provided the comedy to the press conference when he summed up the rumor-mill for 2013.
“There’s a lot of speculation going on,” Edwards said. “Valentino [Rossi] is going back to Yamaha with Jorge [Lorenzo]; Ben [Spies] is going to train for the Tour de France; and Casey [Stoner] is going to call me whenever we’re in the same part of the world and we’re going to go hunting and fishing. So there you go.”
Paul Carruthers | Editor
Paul Carruthers took over as the editor of Cycle News in 1993 after serving as associate editor since starting his career at the publication in 1985. Carruthers has covered every facet of the sport in his near-28-year tenure at America's Daily Motorcycle News Source.
