Ben Spies is refusing to get complacent despite taking a dominant provisional pole position on his debut outing around the Losail International Circuit in Qatar.
Having made headlines with victory on his World Superbike debut at Phillip Island, it had been expected that Spies would struggle more in Qatar around a circuit he has never experienced before.
However, after leading for much of the free practice session in the morning, Spies put his acquired knowledge to good use in provisional qualifying to prove three tenths quicker than second place Jonathan Rea and 1.4secs up on championship leader
Noriyuki Haga.
Nonetheless, despite his speed straight out of the box, Spies insists the competition remains tough and that he expects things to be closer come Superpole and the races.
“Today went pretty good, the result will be more important Saturday but every time I come to the track with Yamaha the bike is getting better and it's already such a fun bike to ride” he said.
“The team's working really well, but there are so many people that are fast out there that if you have just an OK session you end up behind. It's going to be a tough year, but we're clicking off session by session and we'll see where we're going to end up.”
