Foggy Petronas Racing boss, Carl Fogarty, believes that former rider Garry McCoy was simply not suited to the three-cylinder FP1, and struggled with set-up as a result.

_{source: crash.net}

McCoy, a former 500GP winner, signed for Foggy's team after being a race winner in his debut 2004 World Superbike season - in which he also finished sixth in the championship standings for NCR Ducati.

However, the switch to the FP1 proved troublesome almost from the start, with injuries and set-up problems eventually restricting the 'slide king' to just four points-scoring results, a best race finish of 11th and just 22nd in the end of year standings.

"I don't know really (what went wrong), only Garry knows that to be honest," Foggy told Crash.net. "He was given everything, from me, that he needed - down to a chief mechanic and things like that which he wanted and we brought in for him.

"I actually thought at the beginning of the season that the bike might suit him more - he does have a strange way of riding bikes, as you probably know, and I thought 'he's either going to go one way or the other; he's either going to really, really love it or really hate it' - and him hating it was probably what happened.

"He seemed to struggle with set-up; he didn't seem, to me, sure what he wanted, to be honest. He just seemed to be playing around with stuff all day Friday and Saturday and by the time he got it right it would be the second race on Sunday. He also left himself so much to do in the race, because his qualifying was so bad, and that didn't help.

"He just didn't get on with it at all, for whatever reason - it just didn't suit his style of riding and he found it very hard, I think, to set the bike up," concluded.

McCoy has been replaced by World Superbike rookie Craig Jones for the 2006 season, with Steve Martin retained for a second year with FPR.