SPIES ON POLE AT BARBER SUPERBIKE
 Ben
Spies and Mat Mladin have put their Rockstar Makita Yoshimura
GSX-R1000s in first and second places during qualifying for
the second round of the AMA Superbike Championship at Barber
Motorsports Park in Alabama.
It was the first time the two-time defending champion has
sat on his bike after undergoing knee surgery after the Daytona
opener in March.
Spies and team mate Mladin swapped the top position several
times but Spies' best lap came right at the end of 40-minute
session.
Mladin closed down the gap soon after with a best time of
1:23.944, but it wasn't enough to claim pole.
His time of 1:23.880 undercut his previous pole time of 1:24.094
from 2007.
Said Spies: "Everything went good. We missed out on a
couple of tests after Daytona and there were a couple of new
pieces with the bike that came along. These first two sessions
we really had to kind of look at those and pretty much using
both of them and get it set up a little bit better and just
some updates to the forks and seemed to be pretty good. Other
than that I was just going out to kind of use it more as a
practice session to get back up to speed.
Spies said the surgery was a straightforward operation although
the recovery took longer than expected.
He added: "About a week ago was the first time I could
probably get on the bike. So it's just a little bit of swelling
in the spots that I couldn't get out and it's just having
to slowly work out. And it's getting there. It's not 100%
there, but in feeling and training-wise it's fine.
Tommy Hayden took fourth place with a time of 1:25.154 with
Suzuki's Geoff May and Aaron Yates rounding out the top 10.
Friday Qualifying:
1. Ben Spies (Rockstar Makita Suzuki) 1:23.880
2. Mat Mladin (Rockstar Makita Suzuki) 1:23.944
3. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 1:25.107
4. Tommy Hayden (Rockstar Makita Suzuki) 1:25.154
5. Jason DiSalvo (Yamaha) 1:25.327
6. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 1:25.569
7. Neil Hodgson (Honda) 1:26.448
8. Roger Lee Hayden (Kawasaki) 1:26.531
9. Geoff May (Suzuki) 1:26.447
10. Aaron Yates (Suzuki) 1:26.536
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