Spies, Edwards 'friends' - but Tech 3 wall will stay.

The wall in the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 MotoGP pits, introduced last winter after a sudden souring in the relationship between James Toseland and Colin Edwards, will stay in place for 2010 - even though Edwards and new signing Ben Spies are 'the best of friends'.

"Firstly, our wall is only a half wall, because you can go from one garage to another without going outside, which is not the case with others," team owner Herve Poncharal told Crash.net.

"And at the moment Colin and Ben are best of friends, so it is nothing to do with the atmosphere inside the garage.

"The wall makes sense. Everybody needs to work in a quiet environment. You don't want people invited by one rider disturbing the other rider and it also gives us more visibility for the sponsors.

"It worked very well this year. It doesn't matter about the relationship between the riders. It is not linked at all with this.

"It is about being more professional in the way that we work. Each rider needs to concentrate on what he is doing. Less people and less movement around a rider helps with this, especially in the middle of practice."

Factory Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo have had a dividing wall since Lorenzo's arrival in 2008, while the Repsol Honda garage was temporarily divided in late 2008 when Dani Pedrosa switched to Bridgestone tyres.