After his impressive race to seventh spot on Sunday at Valencia, Ben Spies tested initially with his fresh team Monster Yamaha Tech 3 on Monday at the Ricardo Tormo track, tasting his first sample of life in the pit of Herve Poncharal’s team, alongside fellow Texan Colin Edwards.

The American’s best time was the sixth fastest on Monday, he was only 0.8s behind quickest racer Casey Stoner’s pace and a huge 0.6s better than his own quickest lap in Sunday’s event.

The 25 year old finished 50 laps which made it a positive and productive first day with Tech 3. He states, “I was obviously on a different bike but with the same setting that I raced on and it felt good. I improved on my qualifying time so it was a positive and productive day. I really just focused on doing a couple of things different with my style and in the last two sessions I tried to do some things very different and it worked.”

“I was slowly able to chip away at the lap times, so it is encouraging that I'm getting faster and more comfortable without even making any changes to the set-up of the bike. We'll make some changes to the bike tomorrow, more for me to see what I can feel, than looking for big improvements.”