Brno MotoGP Reaction: James Toseland demands Michelin improvement

British rider James Toseland left Michelin in no doubt that he expects significant improvements in tyre performance over the remainder of the season after he slumped to a disappointing 13th in Brno.

Like his fellow Michelin riders, Toseland had severe front-end grip issues in the 22-lap clash and he never looked like threatening the top ten.

And afterwards he said it was paramount that Michelin tried to bounce back from a horrendous recent run of results.

The Tech 3 Yamaha rider said: “It was a difficult race and the result is clearly not where we want to be. I don’t want to be fighting at the back of the top 15, and neither does my team or Yamaha and it is disappointing. All I can do is go out there with whatever I have got underneath me and give it my maximum and I did that.

“But this team and Yamaha deserve to be higher up and today wasn’t good enough. It would be easy to let my head drop but I have never been that type of rider and I am not going to start now. I was reasonably happy with my start but I had a few moments with the front tyre on the first couple of laps and I soon realised that I was at my maximum and that I wasn’t going to be able to do much more.

“It is disappointing because I have slipped out of the top ten in the standings and that was one of my big goals before the start of the season. We have got to keep working hard as a team and hope that Michelin can quickly turn it around for the rest of the season so we can try and get back into that top ten and keep the morale up of the team.

“Colin (Edwards) had even more problems than me so it must have been tough for him but this is the situation we are in. We will all keep pushing hard and see what we can do.”

Team-mate Edwards had an even tougher race as he could only finish 14th. Edwards has now only scored four-points in the last three races to jolt his hopes of claiming fourth in the world championship.

The Texan said: ““I could see straightaway behind James that he was having some issues with the front tyre, which we expected. I still thought I could put a good pace together but it never happened. I just didn’t have the confidence I needed to push harder with the tyres and the more I pushed I didn’t seem to go much faster.

“James was able to leave me pretty easily as my issues started to get worse but I wanted to stay out there and try my best for my guys at Tech 3 and Yamaha, who as always have been working like crazy to help me this weekend.

“I thank them for that, but there was nothing else I could do. Towards the end I just decided to take a few more risks and I went a bit quicker, but there was no way I was going to catch anybody. I’ve had a bad run lately but I’m still in contention for fourth, and I’ll keep fighting.

“The good start we had to the season seems like a long way away now, and we have to work with Michelin to try and solve some of the issues because I didn’t enjoy today at all.”