Monster Yamaha‘s James Toseland wrote off the first MotoGP practice today, blaming the performance on the old engine he was using.
The ex-World Superbike Champion finished the session down in 15th, a second and a half behind team-mate Colin Edwards, after struggling with straight-line speed.
The British rider was looking forward to the rest of the weekend though, explaining that a new engine and some setup changes will help his pace over the rest of the weekend.
“It has been a tough start but I knew it would be because I was running an old engine today and that had a big impact on our performance. For the rest of the weekend we’ll have a fresher motor in that should help because I was quite far down the speed charts,” said Toseland.
“But I was struggling for side grip this afternoon. I’m running more corner speed to make up for the loss in acceleration and that is wearing the rear tyre quite quickly. And during that session we couldn’t find the side grip I needed to go faster. We’ve gained a lot of data though and I’m sure with a few ideas that my guys at Tech 3 have, I’ll be in better shape tomorrow.”
Photo credit: Monster Yamaha
