Friday, October 23, 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 sixth in the season standings after 15 races this season and will compete with the rest of the MotoGP grid at the Grand Prix of Malaysia on Oct. 23-25 at Sepang.
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.
Another solid finish at Phillip Island, fifth. But something makes me think you left there thinking you wanted a lot more. Correct?
Yeah. The weekend it seemed "fifth, fifth, fifth" - we're stuck in this fifth rut. But the four guys in front of me are riding fantastic, anyways. Yeah, I just fell asleep at the (starting) lights, long story short. I've got a routine I normally do when I pull up to the grid. I left that one little piece, as far as grabbing the front brake. I was scared about inching forward. So I was a little bit off my game at the start.
Did I read correctly that you asked Jorge Lorenzo at Phillip Island what setting he was using last weekend, and he told you it was the one you developed in preseason testing?
Well, the reality of it is from what I know of the Malaysia test, we had a setting on the back that I think was more of what we started with. I kind of think it's what everybody started with. But I don't know that for a fact. Valentino was using it, as well, in the Malaysia (preseason) test. And we got away from it. We had a traction problem in Qatar, so we kind of moved away from that particular setting. We never made it fully back to it. It's just a front-end setting. And we never quite made it back to there. Then we've got Malaysia coming up this weekend, and last weekend at Phillip Island, I thought, "Well, why don't we just try it?" And we put it in the bike, and it didn't work. (Laughter) We tried it on the Friday, and I was having some major issues with it. So we kind of came back to what we knew. It's just a head-pipe collar position and some angles with the front head pipe. Once we got back to kind of what I know, then actually I felt better.
Did you play at all with the handlebar position? You did that at Portugal and were pretty sore during and after the race.
No, we pretty much stayed with what we had at Portugal. Phillip Island is fast, but it's not the most physically demanding track out there. That's the one thing about fast tracks: You have a bit of time here and there to kind of catch a breath. Once you get settled into a corner, it pretty much takes its course. You don't have to hold on so damn tight.
How do you mentally adjust to a mistake at the start? It's not a last-lap incident. You still have the whole race to go. How do you calm down, avoid the "red mist" and avoid more mistakes when you're mad at the start?
That's a good question. Once I actually got going at the start, I think it was pretty good. I only came out ninth or something, which, it's pretty easy. If you qualified fifth, you might be fourth, you might be seventh in the first corner. You never know. Just to be ninth, I saw the guys in front of me, and I felt pretty confident that my pace was stronger than theirs. And Australia is typically a track that if you've got more pace than somebody, you can get around them at a couple of different places. I think I passed all of them in just about a lap, or half a lap. In reality, my fastest lap on those race tires I think was (1:)31.6 or 31.5. Hell, the first few laps we were doing 31.5's. And I thought: "Jesus, man! These guys hadn't done that kind of pace that are in front of me." I'm thinking, "I'm riding good, and they're still in front of me, not hindering my lap times." I got Dovizioso I think in the second- or third-to-last corner, and then Kallio made a little mistake coming on to the front straight. I came into Turn 1 and was kind of beside him. Not many people crash into Turn 1, so I just thought, "Well, just let off the brake and see what happens," and just went up under both of them. And then I got Elias half a lap later. And then I put my head down. I think 31.2 or 31.3 was the fastest I had gone. I just tried to string some laps together. I saw de Angelis up there, and I felt like our pace was very similar. He had gained me so much in the first few laps that it was hard to make up that five seconds.
Still, you got points on Dovizioso, who's in fifth in the standings. So he's within reach with two races to go. That must be encouraging.
Yeah, it scheduled out I needed three points a race for the last three races to beat him, and I just got one. We need to get up into the top three, top four. He needs to finish a sixth or a seventh, and then we'll be back on level terms. We've got some work to do. It's not going to be easy. But we've got to get a few points on him.
Looking at the front, the battle at Phillip Island between Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi. Some commentators speculated that Valentino went into points mode when he learned Lorenzo had crashed and never was going to make a bold attempt to pass Casey. Knowing how Valentino loves to win, do you believe that?
I think you have to look at every aspect of the situation. Even if Valentino was to go all out trying to win the race, Valentino knows Casey is going to frickin' risk life and limb to win his home Grand Prix. That's one aspect you've got to look at. The other one being, yeah, Jorge is out. I'd much rather get the championship bonus than a race win bonus. I'd much rather say I won the World Championship instead of saying I won the Australian Grand Prix. There's a lot of different things in there. And once it comes down to the last two or three races, it's definitely just championship mode. Valentino, he's won eight of them, or nine or 20 of them - however many he's won - for a reason. He's a thinking man when he's out there.
How much of the preseason testing that you did seven months ago in Sepang is relevant now? Have the bikes developed so much since then that any data from that test is pretty meaningless?
Generally … That's funny: You spend all winter trying to find the setting. Generally, yeah, you'll come here (for the race), and that setting you might have used (in testing) is probably not worth a damn anymore. But we have a bike, I'll start out on Friday with the exact bike pretty that I ended testing here. I had a good test here. I had good pace going. So our thinking is to come back to what that is. Once we get that working, we can try to improve on that, knowing what we know about other things. So I'm going to go and start straight out with what we finished the test with.
When F1 runs at Barcelona, sometimes the race can be pretty straightforward and processional because the teams do so much preseason testing there that there's no mystery about the place. Is that the same in F1 at places like Sepang or Qatar, where you do preseason testing?
Yeah, definitely everybody feels like they have a slight advantage when they come back. But the reality of it is that it's been eight months, or seven months, since we've been here. There's been a lot of laps run from the test to here. So you've still got to back in the swing of it. Qatar, hell, you test and then a couple of weeks later you go race. That's completely different. It's half-and-half (at Sepang). You feel like you should go out there and just kill it right off the first lap, but you've still got to get into Malaysia mode.
Any unique characteristics of Sepang?
It's hotter than hell. (Laughter). That's one characteristic. It's a momentum place, as well. You're stop and start, hairpin stuff. But the majority of it after that, is all just keeping your momentum up. It's almost two tracks in one.
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