Spies' rotten luck continues at Brno

Ben Spies' run of miserable luck shows no sign of abating after the American rider crashed out of the reckoning at Brno today.

Spies, who started from fourth position on the grid on the factory Yamaha, dropped down to 14th place on the opening lap of the race as a result of an overheating clutch.

He regrouped and scythed through the field to climb to eighth position but crashed out unhurt on lap eight on another weekend to forget in the MotoGP world championship.

Spies, who remains in 10th place in the standings, said: "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.

"I'm really disappointed not just for me but for the team as they've done an excellent job this weekend, we've 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," he added.

"It was no one's fault; we checked the data and my practice starts are identical to my race starts."

Checks later showed the clutch on Spies' YZR-M1 had not been faulty.

"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," he said.

"I still tried to get the best out of it I could and just made a small mistake."

Spies is in contention to join Gresini Honda in 2013 after losing his ride in the works Yamaha team to Valentino Rossi, who will partner Jorge Lorenzo next season.