Thursday, September 3, 2009
Colin Edwards, a Houston native nicknamed "The Texas Tornado," will offer candid insight about his performance, competitors and life in the exciting world of MotoGP motorcycle racing before every event in 2009 in "Tornado Warning."
Two-time World Superbike champion Edwards, 35, is in his seventh year of MotoGP competition, riding this season for Monster Yamaha Tech 3. He is fifth in the season standings after 12 races this season and will compete with the rest of the MotoGP grid at the Grand Prix of San Marino on Sept. 4-6 at Brno.
The colorful Edwards finished fifth in the second annual Red Bull Indianapolis GP on Aug. 28-30 at IMS, racing along with fellow American MotoGP star Nicky Hayden, and MotoGP superstars Valentino Rossi, Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo.
Indy. Judging by your look after the race and comments I read after the race, you didn't look or sound very happy with that fifth-place result. It didn't go the way you wanted, did it?
No, it didn't. It looked like we were sitting kind of fourth, fifth, pretty much all weekend. The top three guys, Pedrosa, Rossi and Lorenzo, just seemed to be going away with it. Actually, I should say Lorenzo and Pedrosa. Valentino looked like he was struggling a little bit. Come race time, got a great start, felt good right after the bat. After a lap and a half, I was like: "Hmmph. This is weird, man. I'm spinning everywhere." I couldn't hold load with the rear tire. The front was like super-sticky, super-grippy, and the rear just kept going in. It's just coming around. I was like, "Oh, this is not a good sign." Normally it's not a good sign. You try to adjust; you have to adjust your style. But at the same time, if you can't hold on your rear load, then you can't get any front load. You depend on the rear to hold grip in turns versus the front. I don't know. We made a decision to go with the soft rear. I had gone faster with the harder rear on Saturday. But I think Bridgestone were kind of worried the last 10 laps. Being that the rubber was so different, they were worried about, let's say, degrading really bad, which sounds completely opposite. Normally you expect the hard tire to come in at the end, but because the weather was a bit cool and the track temperature wasn't quite up there, they were kind of afraid of it cold-tearing toward the end of the race. So we went with the soft tire, and it just … yeah, it never … I did the same lap times all weekend. It's not like I went any slower. But the other guys stepped it up a bit. Obviously, Valentino crashed. Pedrosa crashed first. And then de Angelis, he was just on fire. He came by me, and same with Nicky and Dovizioso. It was all I could do just to watch them walk away from me. We're down on power: We know that. That's never good.
What is it with de Angelis? The guy has been riding pretty well lately. Has the bike improved, or is the guy riding for his MotoGP life since he doesn't have a ride next year?
You know, it's weird because I know Alex. He's a super-nice guy. He's a great rider when everything seems to work. But I think I kind of put it down to something else. Let's say, the track, the actual stones on the second half of the track (at Indy) are very much the same as what you get at Mugello. And he went really good there a couple of years ago. He went good there this year, as well, I believe. But I don't know. I think he likes that particular surface, and he goes really well. He has lots of feel, lots of grip on it, which sounds strange. But I believe that might have something to do with it. And he was just on. All weekend, it seemed like he was going good. I talked with him today. We're over here in Italy. We went and did a little Dorna event, climbing and went to a rehab center for drug addiction, and I asked him, "Did you have grip? Did you have any traction?" He goes: "Oh, yeah. I had plenty." Which is completely the opposite of what I had. So I wish I had something set up pretty good.
I didn't know you were fluent in Italian (Alex de Angelis speaks no English).
Well … (Edwards responds with three sentences in fluent-sounding Italian.)
Am I supposed to transcribe that? (Laughter)
I speak OK Italian. But you get me out on a late night when I got a couple of beers in us, man, I speak it like fluent. Your inhibition goes away a little bit.
Going back to Indy. The track doesn't have elevation change, and it's inside of a stadium setting. You have said IMS doesn't feel like a stadium track. Even so, it's not a classic natural road circuit. But have the different grip levels from the different kinds of asphalt created a healthy respect or even fear for the Indy track over the last two years, maybe more than you expected?
Ab-so-lutely. It's a track that we don't have any tracks like that, apart from the layout. The layout is inside like a stadium thing, which, you know, it doesn't matter. We're here in Misano. You could put Misano in a stadium, as well, and you'd never know it. It's pretty tight. The front straight (at Indy), which is one particular pavement. Then you have the first little section, which is blacktop. Then you roll around to, I don't know, Turn 5, and you've got a different pavement. Then you roll (Turns) 7, 8 and 9, and that is different. Then you roll back to the normal stuff through 9, 10, 11 or whatever, until the end. We just don't have that. It's something we don't have throughout the year. Every track we seem to roll up to, it's pretty much the same. I would say, World Superbike days, going to some different tracks, we would get a few different tarmacs or blacktop or concrete. Whereas now, everything is pretty much fluid. It continues with the same pavement throughout the track. Whereas Indy is very tough, especially in the rain. In the rain, it's very tricky. If it looks like glass, it has good grip on some areas. In the dry, though, you really have to be on your P's and Q's to know where it's at.
Is it good for the series to have a track like that? NASCAR has Darlington; it's "too tough to tame." Is it good for MotoGP to have a track that on paper may not look that tough but in reality be a bit of a beast because of the different grip levels?
Is it good? I don't know. The race, I haven't watched the race. I can only assume it was kind of exciting for the first few laps, but I don't know after that. But the fact: We are spoiled. I know we're spoiled. We roll up to the track, and everything seems to be very fluid. You set your bike up; you have the same pavement. As far as going to Indy, you have all the different kinds of pavement. That is something that probably most of the guys would say, how do I put this politically correct? It's just not the normal. It's not normal. It's not what we normally run on. But it works. I wish the race would have been a lot better. I wish Valentino would have stayed on two wheels. That would have been a pretty good battle. But there's some bumps. There's some bumps around there that caught me out, caught Valentino out, caught Pedrosa out. We just need a little more time.
Any specific moments that you remember from last week that were really fun or really cool?
The whole weekend. Just having friends there and family. My dad was there. The one thing that I would say is in my top-three list of all-time ever motorcycling events that I've ever seen or witnessed or been there was to see Kenny (Roberts) Sr. do the dirt track on that 750. That was just … I was nervous. I'm sweating. My mouth was open, I was sweating. It was cold as hell outside, but I was just nervous watching him. I know Kenny is halfway crazy, but I think he's kind of the godfather of our sport. Without him, I don't know how long it would have taken for Americans to come over and do World Championship stuff. But man, I don't know: Either he was drunk or was very impressive. Maybe a little of both.
I wasn't there, but people said he pinned the throttle pretty good.
Man, it was just insane. It was not normal. I know Kenny thinks he's still 18, but the reality of it is he's 57. I just kind of expected him to fart around. I've seen him. I've been out to Hickman; I've been out to his place. I've dirt-tracked with him years ago, with him and Junior (Kenny Roberts Jr.) and Rainey and Jimmy Felice and Bubba Shobert. We've all dirt-tracked together out on little XR 100's. But that was very impressive watching that.
And that bike just sounds evil, too.
Oh, eeee-vil, man. God. Yamaha asked me, they said, "Hey, Ben Bostrom is thinking about taking a ride. You want to take a spin, maybe Valentino?" And I was like: "Are you crazy? There's no way." I'm not a dirt-track background guy, but there's just absolutely no way. But to have 10,000 and 20,000 people watching? Maybe I'd go out and have a little spin on it. But I don't know the feel of a mile. I've never done a three-eighths mile. We just fart around on little pit bikes.
Moving on to Misano. What are your expectations considering the way your bike is running?
My crew chief, Mr. Guy Coulon is … I go track to track, and he's been here long enough that he knows what we need for this track, what maybe we didn't need at Indy. Here you need maybe a little bit something different, but he's already got the bike adjusted. We've already lifted the front end a little bit, jacked around with some spring rates. This is from years and years and years of experience. Also kind of what I did last year from Indy to here, knowing what you need and what kind of feel you need and what kind of setting that we would migrate to if we started on Indy settings. Just to save time, let's just already kind of migrate that and work from there. I don't know. It should be a good weekend. I like this track. I had 10 laps of torture last year, the first few laps. Cold tire. Once it came good, we were doing good lap times. I'm looking forward to a good race here.
Ducati has re-signed Nicky. Jorge is staying with Yamaha. It seems like pieces are starting to fall into place. Any update with your situation?
Honestly, as we're sitting here talking, I got a beep-beep on my phone, and that was Aprilia calling. So I'm going to have to call them back and see what they've got going on. But you know, I would love to stay where I'm at, honestly. I talked to Ben Spies a little bit a couple days ago. I think he's kind of on board. And obviously Yamaha would love him to win the championship there (World Superbike) first, which it looks like he has a very good possibility of doing that. If we had Team Texas over here at Tech 3, that would just be stellar. I don't know if it's feasible or if it's possible. That's kind of what it's looking like. We need to put our heads together and see what we can come up with. We need to come up with some more sponsors, man. If you've got two guys from Texas, we either search Texas companies or American companies. We just need to come up with a couple more sponsors to throw some cash in and support us.
We'd love it at Indy, I know that.
Yeah, absolutely. For the right sponsor, it's a dream team. You've got two guys from the U.S. or two guys from Texas or whatever it might be. For the right person, the right group or the right company, it's a dream team. But in these times, it's just a matter of finding who that is.
Share:
| Indianapolis Motor Speedway Talkback | Post Comment |
|
|
|