The Texan Yamaha Factory rider was second fastest at the end of the day, 0.295 seconds behind leader Dani Pedrosa and nearly half a second faster than team mate Jorge Lorenzo. The day started slowly with a dirty track but times soon started to drop in the afternoon as more fresh rubber was laid down.

Teammate Lorenzo had a slower start to the day, finding the track conditions more challenging in the search for fast consistent times. The championship leader picked up pace considerably from the morning session to finish behind Spies in third at the end of the day.

Ben Spies

"The track definitely made a huge improvement from the morning to the afternoon today. The bike is working really well; we made some small changes then just worked on race set up. We used hard tyres for the whole time and were able to set our fastest lap and be consistent with a lot of laps on the tyres, which is encouraging. Well try the softer tyres tomorrow to see if we can pick up some speed for qualifying but for the race set up the bike is good."

Jorge Lorenzo

"We were better this afternoon than this morning. We managed to get closer to the first position. I didnt feel great on the track today so I hope we can improve the feeling for tomorrow. This track seems to be quite difficult for us to find a good set up. Im struggling on the entry to the corners where I dont seem to have much grip."