Tech 3 Yamaha place at head of second row through Colin Edwards and James Toseland.
James Toseland inthe Tech 3 Yamaha
James Toseland took fifth on the grid for the Gran Premio Parts Europe de la Comunitat Valenciana, but was left with it all to do after his previous hot lap was blocked by Marco Melandri. Teammate Colin Edwards was fourth in the qualifying session.
James Toseland - Fifth
`I´m really happy to be on the second row at the end because I had to pull a lap out under pressure after Melandri had baulked me at the last corner on my third qualifier. I wasn´t too worried because I thought he was going to start a fast lap, but as we came out of the final corner he didn´t really do anything. That was a bit disappointing but I had to deliver on my last qualifier. When you know it is the last tyre you know you can´t afford to make a mistake, and I did the first split nowhere near as good as I did on the previous tyre when I came across Melandri. The hardest part of this track is the first part because of the speed of the first corner and the preciseness of the second corner. Once you have got that section to the fourth corner done, the circuit flows a bit more, but I wasn´t aggressive enough in the early part. I needed to do a 32 and luckily I managed it. I just hope the warm-up is dry because we need to do some work on the dry set-up, but at least I´ve qualified well and hopefully I can get away with them and see how much grip there is. Any less than the second row and it is very difficult because it so hard to pass at this track. I really want to end the season on a high for the team. I´ve had flashes of brilliance and some disappointing results in my rookie season, so hopefully I´ve got one more flash in me tomorrow. It would be good to end on a high and go into the winter positive for 2009.´
Colin Edwards - Fourth
`It has been an eventful weekend with the weather and if we get a dry warm-up, it is going to be really important to find a decent setting and pick a race tyre. If the race is dry we might have to rely on Michelin´s knowledge and look over some data. I´m sure they had some other guys running around on different rubber to get a feel for what might work, so I´m confident and they won the race last year. We´ve had a couple of issues in the rain and thankfully our prayers for a dry track this afternoon were answered and it worked out good. I had a good pace going on a couple of race tyres I tried and on the qualifiers it is a case of how much do you want to bite off? I felt good and I was really confident and comfortable with the bike. The change we made with the offset in Sepang has really given me a lot of confidence with the front-end and I can really push with the extra grip of the qualifier. I got fifth on the grid in Malaysia and fourth here, so it shows the improvement was a big step because it was a real struggle to get close to the front row recently. I was hoping for a front row but in the end Dani just bumped me off, but I guess this is his home track and you expect those guys to pull one out at the end. I´ll settle for what I've got because I think James and I can really put on a good show for the team tomorrow and secure that fourth in the team championship, which we all want to end on a high.´
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