Tech 3 pair achieve top ten results at team’s home race

The Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team celebrate their 20th season in GP racing this year, so at their home race they might have expected more than seventh place for Colin Edwards and ninth for James Toseland.

However, considering that Edwards was running in sixteenth place at the end of lap one and Toseland has had a hard start to the year the results were not so bad overall.

Colin Edwards – 7th

“I'm really disappointed because it was definitely a missed opportunity today for a podium. In the first part of the race on the wet tyres I just couldn't get the bike to turn. I'd lost so many places I was nearly at the back and I just wasn't comfortable. The bike was just sitting on the rear and I had no weight on the front, so I couldn't get into the corner. I saw some guys come into the pits and I thought it was a couple of laps too early because there were still some wet patches out there. I waited for a bit and came in and on the first couple of laps back out of the pits I lost so much time again. I was on the hard front tyre because I can't run the soft compound and it took a while to get some heat into it. I had a couple of moments but once it came good, it came really good and I got my head down. I think only Jorge (Lorenzo) was lapping faster than me and once I got my pace going I was catching people pretty quickly. To only finish seventh is a bit frustrating when you look at my times in the dry. At the end of the day I rode a good second half of the race. But the first half wasn't great and that cost me. I'm confident for Mugello though and hopefully we'll get plenty of dry track time.”

James Toseland – 9th

“That was pretty eventful and my team did a great job for the change of bikes. I've never been in a flag-to-flag race before and it is definitely different. There's no time to lose concentration in the pits because everything is still happening so quickly. And when you go out on a damp track on slicks you can't lose focus. The team told me they were going to put ‘OK' on the board as soon as the first person came in, and though nobody was coming in around me, I felt I came in at the right time. It's always a risk because there were a couple of corners where it was still quite damp, but for two-thirds of the track you definitely needed slick tyres. My pace on the slicks at the start was really good and I was seventh at one point. But I was on the soft front tyre and it kept getting hotter and hotter and the stronger front harder tyre was what I needed. When I was trying to stay with Colin at the end I just didn't have the front grip unfortunately. It was nice to be fighting up there again but on the other hand a bit frustrating because I think we could have had a seventh. It's not the best finish but I really feel we have made a step forward here and my team is working great. As long as we can keep working like this I'm really looking forward to the next few races.”