Yamaha Factory Racings Ben Spies had a promising weekend compromised yet again as his run of bad luck continues to haunt him.

The Texans clutch overheated from the race start, taking a couple of laps to cool down before it became 100% effective again. The issue initially dropped the unlucky rider down to 14th before he made a spirited comeback, climbing six places to eighth by lap eight where unfortunately he crashed.

Ben Spies

"The crash today was no other fault than myself, I was trying to get back into a rhythm and catch the group in front of me because I could see they were coming back and I had a good lap times for coming through. Im really disappointed not just for me but for the team as theyve done an excellent job this weekend, weve showed speed and motivation all weekend which is hard to do after Laguna and Indy. The race was really over for me before turn one because the clutch overheated off the line. It was no ones fault; we checked the data and my practice starts are identical to my race starts. We checked the clutch and there is nothing wrong with it, it just overheated and took over two laps to cool down enough to give it 100% by which time the race was over. I still tried to get the best out of it I could and just made a small mistake."