Factory Yamaha's Ben Spies expects 'to be hurting' at his two home MotoGP races as both Indianapolis and Laguna Seca both require something his YZR-M1 needs more of - acceleration.
The Texan has identified that although the bike's crossplane crank engine has plenty of top-end speed, a slight lack of traction and large lack of power means getting out of low-gear corners is causing problems and he isn't expecting any upgrades until at least the Brno round which falls between the two US races.
"I hear Brno is the next new engine, I'd like to think it's going to have more power but how much more I don't know. At the moment, the top speed isn't a problem, it's acceleration. Here (Silverstone), it wasn't horrible, not like Le Mans, so I don't see us being too bad later on," said Spies.
"At Assen, there are two parts at the track where I think we will suffer, Mugello depends on whether the new asphalt has a lot of good grip. I don't think it will be too big of a problem to come onto the front straight at the top of third gear. To
"Sachsenring, Laguna and Indy we will be hurting on acceleration but like I said when we're rolling at the top of third, fourth and fifth we have good speed, we just need to improve the lower gears. We are missing the traction which generates acceleration but we need both. Even if we solved the rear grip issue, we would still need more power."
