Factory Yamaha's Ben Spies has no worries about tyre life over the course of this season's MotoGP rounds after finding that grip drops off after 18 laps at Jerez and then the Bridgestones begin to move around - just like he is used to from his Superbike racing days.
The 2009 WSBK Champion did a long run on the hard-compund Bridgestones yesterday and discovered that at just after half distance on a race simulation, the grip begins to go away and he thinks that will give him an advantage over the pack. In 2011, the tyres took an age to warm up, but then gripped until almost right to the end, just like Superbike-spec Pirellis don't.
"I hope to capitalise on that as I like it when the tyres moves around. The race is 27 laps, we only did 18 laps but pretty much when you get to 18 laps the tyres have done all they are going to do and we stayed in the 1'40s lap bracket the whole time and didn't have any problems," said Spies, speaking to bikesportnews.com at Jerez.
"Our simulation was more to check fuel consumption and to get my body used to riding more than five laps at a time. We will probably do one or two more before the end of the weekend just to see how it goes - the tyre performance, for me, was pretty good at the track. I tried the two new front and set similar laptimes, they just have slightly different feeling."
