Edwards warns Yamaha can go faster

 The American kicked off this week's Qatar test, which features all 21 riders for the first time, with the quickest time again as he edged out his teammate Valentino Rossi.

But despite the impressive form, Edwards thinks his team can do even better and make further steps forward with the bike.

"We're coming here off the back of a fantastic test in Sepang and we've started on pretty good form again today," he said at the end of running at Qatar.

"Things aren't totally perfect; the first-choice front tyre that we found in Malaysia and which I was super-happy with isn't available here at the moment and I felt I was lacking a bit of feeling in the morning, but we changed a few things on the setting and at the end of the day everything made sense.

"Despite the good time we've definitely got room for improvement, which we hope will come with a couple of different tyres tomorrow and some new things we want to try on the setting.

"Anyway, the really encouraging thing is that we've come to a new track and the bike has worked well straight out of the box; let's hope that's the case everywhere this year.

"We did a lot of work on the braking in Sepang and we don't have any problems with that here, so it looks like we fixed those problems. It's been a very productive first day in every aspect."

Rossi was equally upbeat about the pace of the new 800cc Yamaha, and believes Edwards' form was evidence of just how good the bike is.

"Today was quite good and I am happy with the work we've done as a team; we were fast straight away and it's good to see that our bike works well at a different track," he explained.

"We continued to develop some things with the setting and we also worked on tyres with Michelin. This is a hard track for them so it's important we are ready with the tyres for the first race.

"The bike felt very good from the start and you can ride it well; we don't have any chatter, or any particular problems at all, so we're in a better position than last year.

"I am also happy because Colin is fast; in fact, he's a little bit faster than me! This is a good sign though, because it shows how good our bike is. Of course we still have areas to improve and so we will continue to work hard for the next two days."