Spies takes maiden MotoGP victory

Yamaha Factory Racing’s Ben Spies took his first win in the MotoGP class at Assen on June 25, with the two Repsol Hondas of Casey Stoner and Andrea Dovizioso occupying the lower two steps on the podium.

Spies, who was edged out of pole position by Marco Simoncelli (San Carlo Honda Gresini), rode a perfect race to finish 7.697 seconds ahead of Stoner.

The Texan got off to a good start, allowing him to narrowly avoid the drama of the first lap, when Simoncelli took out Spies’ team-mate Jorge Lorenzo in the third corner. Simoncelli had hoped to finally reach the podium in the Saturday race, but the Italian fell victim to a cold tyre early on.

“It was strange because it was one of the most comfortable races I’ve had, and it resulted in a win. I had a good feeling with the bike at the start of the race so I pushed to make a gap,” said Spies. “Even after I was three or four seconds ahead of Casey, when he pushed to try to catch me, I still had some reserve I could use, so I could speed up if I needed to.

“It felt good to do it here this weekend, in the Yamaha 50th colours with all the greats watching, I guess it added a little bit of pressure now that I think about it.

“At least I don’t have to hear ‘are you ever going to win a race?’ There is always that question, now I can keep developing the bike for next year and keep having fun. Obviously now I want a championship.”

Stoner is now 28pts ahead of Lorenzo in the championship, while Dovizioso remains third, but is now only nine points behind the Spaniard.

"Today we would have liked to challenge for the win but the way this weekend has gone for us I'm really very happy for a podium finish and to take some valuable points,” said Stoner. “Yesterday we weren't happy with the bike the set-up, so today we made some changes and tried to get some more feeling, but unfortunately in the warm up we didn't get a proper chance to try it, which meant we started the race with a set up we didn't really know.

“After the crash yesterday I'm a little bit sore, in the middle part of the race I started to have some problems in the left hand corners with the shoulder but in general we knew we didn't really have the pace to stay with Ben.

“I tried everything possible to catch him, but he was able to retain the advantage and start to pull some more, so my congratulations to Ben, he rode a great race, but for us it was just important to get points today.”

The Ducati factory duo was lead across the finish line by Valentino Rossi in fourth and Nicky Hayden in fifth. Lorenzo was able to rejoin the race and put his head down after the clash with Simoncelli to cross the line in sixth place.

Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team rider Colin Edwards was seventh, in front of Dani Pedrosa’s stand-in Hiroshi Aoyama. They were followed by Simoncelli in ninth, who rejoined the race after push starting his own motorcycle following the run in on the first lap. Toni Elias of the LCR Honda team completed the top 10 finishers.

In Moto2, Anthony West (MZ Racing) rode a strong race to finish fourth, his best finish of the season thus far. Reigning 125cc champion Marc Márquez (Team CatalunyaCaixa Repsol) crossed the finish line in first, climbing six places in the championship to put him second in the standings.

The 18-year-old finished in front of Kenan Sofuoglu (Technomag-CIP), the Turkish rider’s first podium of the season, and Smith (Tech 3) in third, the Briton's second podium of the season.

In the Red Bull Rookies Cup, Australia 15-year-old Arthur Sissis traded first and second places with 14-year-old Italian Lornezo Baldassarri over the two races.