The American previewed the 2012 season and the final Test at Jerez in an interview ahead of the Yamaha Factory Racing team launch on Thursday.

In the attached video interview Ben Spies previews the forthcoming season, and discourses on a range of subjects which includes the YZR-M1, the introduction of CRTs, his rivals for 2012, and his future.

"The 1000cc suits me a little bit more than the 800; it’s more or less suited to the way I ride," said Spies of the increase in engine size for 2012. "Being a bigger rider, having more torque and the extra horsepower helps. Yamaha’s done a fantastic job getting us a base package. Pre-season testing’s gone well; we had some good times, so far so good!"


"I think the Yamaha engineers have done a fantastic job, we’ve been to Sepang twice now and we’ve had a lot of parts to test. In the last couple of years it’s been about refining and tuning; now we’ve been actually testing new parts. We’ve reached some good solutions on different things on the electronics and the engine package and everything. We’ve also got another test coming up and we’ll have some more stuff to try so the bike’s just getting better and better every test which is good."

Evaluating the machine overall, Spies added: "The 2012 M1 is for me a very good balance. Like the 800 was but we seem to have improved our weaker points of the bike. The balance of the bike is the key thing so when we go to one track that’s an extreme from another track it will work well there too. I’d say it doesn’t have one general strong area it’s just every area is now not weak. It’s a good balanced bike, that’s what we need for a full Championship with as many races as we have."



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