MotoGP
Japanese GP: Tech 3 Yamaha qualifying report
Edwards and Toseland ready for Japanese battle Tech 3 Yamaha duo Colin Edwards and James Toseland claimed top ten grid positions for tomorrow's 24-lap Japanese MotoGP race at the Twin Ring Motegi. Edwards claimed his best qualifying position ...
Edited: Sep 27, 2008, 11:27 PM
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Edwards and Toseland ready for Japanese battle
Tech 3 Yamaha duo Colin Edwards and James Toseland claimed top ten grid positions for tomorrow's 24-lap Japanese MotoGP race at the Twin Ring Motegi.
Edwards claimed his best qualifying position since his home race in Laguna Seca as he finished an exciting session with the seventh quickest time. Having spent most of the day trying to improve rear traction on race tyres, Edwards was immediately in the groove on his first Michelin qualifying tyre.
He jumped to the top of the timesheets with a lap of 1.47.082 with 23 minutes remaining and showed impressive progress throughout. By the end he was only 0.046s off claiming a superb second row start with a best time of 1.46.496.
Toseland will start from 10th position as the British rider worked tirelessly on fine-tuning his race set-up to suit harder compound tyres, with conditions much hotter than yesterday's mixed weather. Toseland steadily improved his pace and he's confident he can fight his way into contention for a top six finish in Yamaha's home race.
Colin Edwards 7th 1.46.496 - 24 laps
"I felt like I threw everything at it today but I couldn't get close to Jorge's time. That was pretty impressive and he did an awesome job. The weird thing is that our qualifier doesn't usually spin at all but for some reason today that's all mine did. Michelin have had a great qualifier all year but today it felt more like a soft race tyre, which is very strange and I don't know if it is down to the tyre or the set-up. Looking at Jorge and how he seemed to make it work, I guess it was our set-up. On race tyres it is the same. Everything I have got it is spinning but there is no variation. I've got three tyres I could race and they all feel the same. Normally that would tell you there is a set-up issue. We had spinning problems yesterday and we played around with rear springs and some other suggestions we thought might work, but none of it really seemed to make any difference. We just haven't found anything yet. Looking at my race pace, I don't really have a low 47 in my package at the moment and it looks like that's what we are going to need. It would have been good to be on the second row because history has shown that the first corner here can be pretty tough. It is also not the easiest place to overtake on. There are a lot of hard braking zones but you've got lots of momentum going into the corner, so you've got to be really confident to dive underneath somebody. This is a big race for Yamaha tomorrow and hopefully I can play a big part in it."
James Toseland 10th 1.46.863 - 23 laps
"I paid for my lack of time and experience on this track really. To be in the top ten is not too bad but when you believe you can do a lot better it is frustrating. With four qualifiers you need half the session to use them and that just leaves you ten to fifteen laps on race tyres to find a good set-up. We got the bike a bit better and got into the 48s but we really need to be doing high 47s to be challenging for the top six. I'm pretty happy with my progress but with that rain session yesterday it has held me back a little bit. We made a step forward with the set-up yesterday but there is more we need to do. The temperature was a lot hotter today and the softer tyre that was looking good,we can't use. Now it is warmer we need to run the harder tyre and we need a lot more weight on the rear to make it work. The setting that we had was fine for the softer tyre but with the harder one it wasn't putting enough load on the rear tyre. On the qualifiers I got into the 46s and I'm only three-tenths off Colin and he has been here many times on the same bike. I could have done with being on that third row so it will be a bit difficult but we'll try and keep out of trouble early on. You need a good start because there is not much distance between the start and the first corner. There is a top six finish out there if we can improve the setting and I'll be giving it my all as usual with this being such an important race for everybody at Yamaha."
-credit: tech 3
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