Ben Spies and Mat
Mladin have put their Rockstar Makita Yoshimura GSX-R1000s in first and second
places during qualifying for the second round of the AMA Superbike Championship
at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama.
It was the first time the two-time
defending champion has sat on his bike after undergoing knee surgery after the
Daytona opener in March.
Spies and team mate Mladin swapped the top
position several times but Spies' best lap came right at the end of 40-minute
session.
Mladin closed down the gap soon after with a best time of
1:23.944, but it wasn't enough to claim pole.
His time of 1:23.880
undercut his previous pole time of 1:24.094 from 2007.
Said Spies:
"Everything went good. We missed out on a couple of tests after Daytona and
there were a couple of new pieces with the bike that came along. These first two
sessions we really had to kind of look at those and pretty much using both of
them and get it set up a little bit better and just some updates to the forks
and seemed to be pretty good. Other than that I was just going out to kind of
use it more as a practice session to get back up to speed.
Spies said the
surgery was a straightforward operation although the recovery took longer than
expected.
He added: "About a week ago was the first time I could
probably get on the bike. So it's just a little bit of swelling in the spots
that I couldn't get out and it's just having to slowly work out. And it's
getting there. It's not 100% there, but in feeling and training-wise it's
fine.
Tommy Hayden took fourth place with a time of 1:25.154 with
Suzuki's Geoff May and Aaron Yates rounding out the top
10.
Friday Qualifying:
1. Ben Spies
(Rockstar Makita Suzuki) 1:23.880
2. Mat Mladin (Rockstar
Makita Suzuki) 1:23.944
3. Eric Bostrom (Yamaha) 1:25.107
4.
Tommy Hayden (Rockstar Makita Suzuki) 1:25.154
5. Jason
DiSalvo (Yamaha) 1:25.327
6. Jamie Hacking (Kawasaki) 1:25.569
7. Neil
Hodgson (Honda) 1:26.448
8. Roger Lee Hayden (Kawasaki)
1:26.531
9. Geoff May (Suzuki) 1:26.447
10. Aaron
Yates (Suzuki) 1:26.536
