Edwards Qualifies Seventh

Henny Ray Abrams | July 4, 2009

Monster Yamaha Tech 3’s Colin Edwards rebounded from a morning crash to qualify seventh for Sunday’s Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix.Edwards spent much of the one hour session struggling with a front end problem that had him languishing near the bottom of the order. Edwards was in 14th place before a late push moved him to seventh, a position he was able to defend for the final 12 minutes.”The bike felt better than yesterday but I’m still not completely happy and I’ve still got a few issues to iron out before the race,” he said. “To be seventh, I’m pretty happy because I didn’t feel like I could push as hard as I want or need to. But if I can eliminate a couple of problems in the warm-up I’m confident of a good race.”The qualifying session was one of the closest and most dramatic of the year, with the top ten riders finishing on the same second. Edwards will start the eighth round of the MotoGP World Championship from row three, the first time he’s been off row two since the Spanish GP back in May.The day hadn’t begun well for Edwards, who lost most of the fingernail off the third finger on his right hand in a turn 10 crash in the cooler morning practice.”I made a mistake this morning and did a bit of damage to a finger on my right hand, but nothing that is giving me too many problems,” he said. “It wasn’t fun though, high-siding at turn 10, because that’s not a slow corner. I was on my head and then my back, so just to take a fingernail off I feel pretty lucky. But the big issue is the feeling from the front-end. I’ve got too much movement and as soon as I go into the corner it doesn’t feel stable at all.”Edwards knows that for the first of his two home GP’s it’s “going to be tough to get a podium tomorrow but I’ll be giving it my all for the American fans and for Monster. There are a lot of people here to support me on a big weekend for America and I’m determined to give them a good result.”