Top six placing for Edwards as round three commences

Colin Edwards made a flying start to the Jerez weekend on Friday, the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider clocking the sixth best time in opening free practice.

James Toseland, meanwhile, looks to build on his first top ten result of the season in Japan last weekend. A best lap of 1.41.461 pushed the British rider into the top ten in the closing stages, but the 28-year-old eventually dropped down to 11th.

Colin Edwards - 6th

“That was a good solid start and I'm happy with the bike. Yamaha has done a great job because we seem to go from track to track and be right up with the leaders from the start. There are a couple of things with the electronics and chassis set-up that we can definitely find at least another half-a-second to go consistently quicker around the 40.3 area. That's not going to trouble Valentino (Rossi) but that would be a big step for us and put us in contention. With the electronics we just need to get the anti-wheelie working a bit better. Yamaha did a great job with that in the winter and we needed that improvement on a track like this where you accelerate hard out of a lot of slow hairpins. I'm losing a little bit of time on acceleration and we can still make it better, but my guys at Tech 3 know what they are doing and I know we'll make a big step for tomorrow. I'm doing those lap times and I'm not 100 per cent comfortable, so that bodes well for the weekend knowing we've got a lot of room for improvement.”

James Toseland - 11th

“We went for a harder setting on the front fork to help with some of the heavy braking points but it didn't really work as we'd liked. We also changed the rear a bit from Japan and the balance wasn't really there. We didn't really have time to go back to plan B but even with a couple of small issues I'm not too displeased with my time and I know my potential is much higher. I think what is going to be crucial is to conserve the tyre here over race distance and that's something I'll work out with my team. I ran the harder rear today because of the hot conditions and even that was sliding around a little after about eight laps. I could see a few other people were having the same problems, so a decent race set-up will be critical. A bit more time would have put me in the top eight and it wouldn't have been a bad afternoon, but we know where we can improve on the setting and be much stronger tomorrow.”