After enjoying Ducati's advanced traction control electronics, the Briton admits he was shocked the first time he rode the Ten Kate tuned Fireblade, during pre-season testing, prior to the start of the 2006 season.
"The first test at Valencia, I remember, was a complete disaster - no traction control and 300 million brake horsepower from Ten Kate!" he joked. "My rear wheel was going 100 mph faster than the front wheel and I didn't know what the hell had happened after riding the Ducati! But we had five tests and we won at the first round of 2006 in Qatar and that was the start of a fantastic relationship between me, this team and Honda.
"It's difficult without traction control these days, unfortunately. Part of me thinks lets sort it out without traction control. In this day and age traction control is a massive aid for any rider," continued the double
WSBK champion. "So I knew, having challenged for the championship in 2006 without electronics, that the only missing piece in the jigsaw was electronics. We got that this year and it made the difference between finishing second and first."
But it wasn't quite that simple. Toseland and Ten Kate were forced to change their traction control system mid-season when they realised the HRC unit was falling behind those used by the competition.
"We started with the HRC system and unfortunately we weren't getting any update on it and when we went to Misano we were left behind," he said. "That was the first track where it really did highlight that we were falling behind on electronics, so we had to go with the PI system just because we had a lot more scope with it to solve the problems we had.
"So we switched electronic systems halfway through the season. We changed to the PI system then went to Brno and won the first race. I'd been sixth at Misano before that and obviously sixth doesn't win championships. So compliments to the team, they noticed we were falling behind and changed systems."