Assen MotoGP: James Toseland frustrated in 13th

James Toseland’s hopes of making an immediate return to form in Assen today hit problems as he ended the opening day of free practice down in 13th place.

The British rider, who had a disastrous home race at Donington Park just four days ago, struggled for the majority of the opening day with a lack of rear grip going into corners.

It was only a late change to a similar geometry set-up used by Tech 3 Yamaha team-mate Colin Edwards that moved the 27-year-old into the 1.37 bracket.

Toseland, who visited Yamaha Europe’s headquarters in the build-up to this weekend’s Dutch GP, said: “It is hard work at the moment to be honest. We wasted a lot of time and should have gone with the setting we had at the end much earlier.

“Basically I’ve gone closer to what Colin is running but we didn’t do it until too late and it was quite a frustrating session. I got up to speed quite fast right at the end when we tried this new setting so it seems like we have found a good direction but we wasted too much time getting there.

“The bike is better on the brakes because I was losing so much rear grip on the entry of the corners that I had no corner speed. The way this setting transfers the weight is much more smooth and doesn’t move off the rear as quick.

“With the new setting I got straight into the 37s and I feel I could have built on that but we’d been going round in circles for too long. I just spent too much time in the garage and when I need the track time to get the bike set-up on a track I’ve not tested on, I can’t afford to do that.

“I’m trying to learn the track on this bike so I need to be out there. Now we’ve got this setting I’m confident for tomorrow that we can move forward.”