Late falls fail to dampen spirits of Spies and Edwards

The Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team ended its pre-season preparations for the 2010 MotoGP world championship in high spirits on a hot and humid night at the Losail International Circuit in Qatar.

With humid conditions reducing grip levels from the opening night, both Colin Edwards and Ben Spies were unable to improve their times tonight (Friday).

The Texan pair were still able to carry out some valuable testing on the set-up of their Yamaha YZR-M1 machines and also assess a range of soft and hard compound front and rear Bridgestone tyres ahead of the first race under Qatar's spectacular floodlights on April 11th.

Edwards ended tonight's six-hour session with the eighth fastest time, a best lap of 1’56.722 less than 0.5s away from the top five. Spies was just two places further back in 10th with a best lap of 1’56.780. That was less than 0.1s away from Edwards' pace.

Spies' best lap of 1’55.954 from the opening night was still good enough to secure him a top five place on the overall timesheets and boost his confidence ahead of his much-anticipated debut for the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team next month.

Both Edwards and Spies escaped injury in identical crashes at Turn Two tonight.

Colin Edwards - 8th – 1’56.722 – 48 laps

“It wasn't the ending to testing I was looking for but it wasn't too bad. I just didn't really have a great feeling with the bike tonight and we need to have a think about things before we come back for the race next month. We've got some work to do because I just didn't feel as comfortable on the bike as I did last year, mainly with the front-end. And I know I go good at this track because I had a good race last year and finished fourth. I'm not sure what happened with the crash but I did exactly the same as Ben. I was on the soft front tyre that I'd not really run that much on the first night. But I was on my sixth lap on the tyre, so it should have been ready to push. But I was down before I knew it and it is a fast crash, even if you're only in second gear. I'm just glad I didn't get hurt so close to the first race because that was a fast crash. I'm really excited about going racing now. It seems like a long time since Valencia and I'm sure we can have another great year with the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 Team."

Ben Spies - 10th – 1’56.780 – 44 laps

“I didn't have a great night really but that can happen. Everything that could go wrong went wrong tonight. But I've have had a great winter and this was the first session where it didn't go the way we wanted it to. I'd had some small issues early on and went into Turn Two again and just lost the front. I wasn't really sure what happened but then four people crashed in the next 30 minutes so it must have got really humid really quick because something wasn't right with that many people going down in the same place. I did a few more laps to clear my head and got down to some decent times and I'm happy I did that. But it was still a successful test and I leave confident that I'll be competitive for the race next month. I want to thank my guys at Monster Yamaha Tech 3 for all their effort in the winter. We've done a good job and I feel we're in a position to have a competitive start to the season.”

Press release courtesy of Monster Yamaha Tech3