Edwards goes 'old school' with no TC

Colin Edwards went back to pre-Traction Control days during the early stages of Sunday's wet French MotoGP, when a problem with the electronics left the Texan to 'race with his wrist'.

FTR-Kawasaki star Edwards, who teaches bike control for aspiring racers at his Texas Tornado Boot Camp, explained:

"Had a good start and in the first lap it just kind of started coming around on me that I had no traction control taking over and that had me a little nervous. At that point I knew I had to do the race 'old school', which is no problem, just have to do everything with the wrist.

"Had a couple of hairy moment the first two laps and then once everything started coming in and the line started to dry up I just put my head down and when I started hearing the electronics I pushed as hard as I could.

"It got to a point, and I think everybody was in a similar boat, in which the soft [wet] tyres on a drying track was very hard on the tyres, the last 12 laps you couldn't really do anything other than staying on the bike.

"We qualified 17th and finished 16th but at the end of the day we have some good information for rain setup. We haven't spent much time in the rain with this bike and now we have some information to go back to."

Italian team-mate Claudio Corti was unable to finish due to an engine problem.

Forward Racing is one of the privateer teams being linked to use of the Yamaha M1 engines next season.