Toseland confident of improvement in Valencia
Added on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Toseland confident of improvement in Valencia
James Toseland believes that both he and Yamaha are making improvements despite their poor start to the World Superbike season, with the former MotoGP rider determined to show his worth in Valencia this weekend.
Toseland has struggled to make an impression in the opening two rounds of the season, with his best result a sixth place finish in race two at Portimao two weeks ago after injury and technical issues hit in Australia.
But the 2007 champion is going to Valencia in a more confident mood, taking the positives from the improvements in Portugal from both him and teammate Cal Crutchlow.
“We’ve made massive improvements from Australia to Portugal,” said Toseland, “which obviously the podium from Cal proved.
“The second race in Portimao was particularly good for me. I had a really good race pace but couldn’t get to front which was disappointing as I started from too far back.
“The Valencia test went well in the winter and I’ve done a lot on the Spanish track compared to Portugal so I’m looking forward to getting out there and getting stuck in, being able to concentrate on the bike set up without having the added focus of learning the circuit.”
Crutchlow is equally optimistic ahead of this weekend’s round, having secured Yamaha’s first podium of the season a fortnight ago.
“After my podium at Portimao I’m keen to get to Valencia,” he added. “I think we can continue our good streak.
“I don’t know how the bike will be there as we used the 2009 bike in our winter test but I’m optimistic. Lots of the teams have tested there recently so we’ve got some work to do, but hopefully we’ll be up there and have a good result.”
