Friday, December 18 2009
Ben Spies, the amazing biker from Texas has had a strong year in 2009. One of the highlights of 2009 happened at Magny-Cours, France in early October. At Magny-Cours Ben Spies of the Yamaha race Team won his tenth World Superbike Superpole of this season. Ben won this position with a lap time of one minute, 37.709 seconds on the 4.4km, 18-turn track in France. This made Ben Spies the first Superbike racer to hit the 1:37 mark at Magny-Cours; on top of this, Ben tied the record for winning the most poles in one season. Additionally, Spies is tied with Frankie Chili for seventh place for the all-time World Superbike pole wins, Chili raced 12 World Superbike seasons.
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Winning the pole at Magny-Cours came as a surprise to Spies, being that he had not been to this circuit before and had been able to achieve beyond fourth in the qualifying rounds and preliminary practice runs.
In the first Superpole Spies showed no sign of what was fixing to take place in the following laps. During that beginning session, Spies improved just a slight amount, grasping the third best time following Leon Haslam and Jonathan Rea. When the second session rolled around, things started falling into place for Spies as he went to the top and approached the 1:37 mark by running a 1:38.116 lap time. It was on his last lap that Spies seen it all come together on his Yamaha R1 as he burnt the track with an impressive 1:37.709, which placed him a half second quicker than Jonathan Rea, the rider who was the second fastest.
