Confidence growing for Edwards

Seventh may not be Colin Edwards’ target but it signified a step up after a difficult first portion of the season for the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider. The result, at his home GP at Laguna Seca, was the result of a weekend of hard riding from the Texan, who was satisfied with the progress he felt compared to previous rounds.

“I'm really happy with the way I rode all weekend and there was nothing more I could have done. Fighting for seventh is not really where I want to be in my home race, but compared to where I have been recently it is a big improvement and thanks to all my guys at the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 crew for all their efforts,” said Edwards, who enjoyed himself out on track.

“I had a good early battle with Melandri and Simoncelli and that was fun and I made a couple of good moves on them because I was quite a bit faster. Once I got by Simoncelli I put my head down to see if I could break them and that's what I did. But I couldn't even see the group in front of me and I just slowed my pace up a little bit because it made no sense to crash out of my home race when I was never going to catch them up.”

The weekend marked a shift in where Edwards wants to be as he felt the benefit of some updates from Yamaha on his M1 machine.

“I was pretty much stuck in seventh all weekend and I never really had the pace of the leading group. But I'm closer to where I know I should be and the upgrades from Yamaha were a help, now I can look forward to a good break confident of a strong second half of the season," he concluded.