Motegi MotoGP: James Toseland satisfied with top ten

James Toseland reckons he could not have done much more to improve on his top ten qualifying result in Japan today.

The British rider will start tomorrow’s 24-lap Japanese GP from 10th place on the grid having clocked a best time of 1.46.863.

Much hotter conditions today forced Toseland to try and set his Tech 3 Yamaha YZR-M1 up on harder compound race tyres and he said: “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, now it is warmer we need to run the harder one 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 (Edwards) 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.”