British MotoGP: Colin Edwards admits struggle despite British MotoGP pole position

Colin Edwards reckons he still needs to drastically improve his speed through the tight and slow final section at Donington Park despite claiming pole position for tomorrow’s 30-lap British MotoGP race.

The Texan claimed his second pole of the season when he denied Fiat Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi with a brilliant last flying qualifying lap of 1.28.531.

That time edged out seven-times world champion Valentino Rossi by just 0.146s, even though Edwards was nearly 0.4s clear of Rossi through the first three timed sections.

And he told MCN tonight that he must improve through the tricky Melbourne Loop and Goddards final corner to harbour hopes of mounting a serious victory threat tomorrow.

“My race pace is good but I just need to drop about three-tenths in that last section.
“If I can get it consistent and a bit quicker I’ll be there as well because there’s a lot of guys doing some fast lap times on race tyres.

“In the first three sections I’m just as fast as anybody. It’s only two corners and that’s bullshit.

“It’s hard to swallow being three or four tenths down in two corners. We’ll do some work to get it dialled in tomorrow morning, “said Edwards, who scored his maiden premier class pole position at the French GP in Le Mans last month.

The double World Superbike champion added: “Honestly I’m still riding that last section like the old surface where it was so bumpy in the last corner.

“I’m still doing all my braking straight up and down and then tipping it in.

“I saw Hopper (John Hopkins) going in there today so hot and I thought ‘man he is going to crash.’

“That kind of woke me up and that was right towards the end so tomorrow we got to play around with the front tyre with some air pressure difference in the warm-up and it should be better.”

With Yamaha claiming a 1-2 on the grid, Edwards said it was obvious that the 2007 YZR-M1 was tough to beat on soft qualifying rubber.

He added: “The bike on qualifiers is pretty much proving to be quite phenomenal.

“In the past you can have a good bike on good race tyres but sometimes you get too much grip front and rear and there’s chatter issues or some handling issues.

“But our bike just gets better with more grip.

“We don’t have any issues with more grip and it just works awesome.

“A lot of times you are gaining time in places but losing time in others if you have troubles with a qualifier but our bike seems to excel everywhere.

“I’m feeling good, the bike is doing everything I want it to. I don’t have any dilemmas.”