Ben Spies' crew chief Tom Houseworth reckons that a good setup under heavy braking is the key to a fast World Superbike laptime at the Nurburging this weekend.

Houseworth, who has guided Spies for most of his Superbike career, says he will spend most of today looking at gearbox ratios and tomorrow getting a good braking setup on Spies' number two bike.

“Heading into the Nurburgring we have a couple of issues to address, this will force us to change just a bit from our normal routine. By now it seems normal going to a circuit we have never seen," said Houseworth.

"From what we have heard the corners are a bit slower than Brno with braking very important into them, so we will start with a different setup for our number one machine. For the first session Ben will learn the track as quickly as possible on our number one machine and evaluate chassis, gearbox and overall performance.

"The second session we are planning to start on the number two machine to evaluate a setup targeting performance under very heavy braking. If all goes well the #2 machine will do everything the number one machine does plus what we’re looking for under braking.

"Today will be a busy first day as we have quite a bit to sort out in the two sessions including very important gearbox ratios. Saturday will provide us time to sort race rubber and try some different links or geometry depending on the mechanical grip we have and be ready for Sunday."