Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127736
·Interview: Colin Edwards II he fact is that Colin Edwards n, the 20-year-old Texan of whom much has been expected since his AMA debut at the AMA National in Miami in 1991, has been thrown in the deep end of one of the· most competitive racing series in the world. His is the name most often mentioned in discussions of the future of American road racing, and he earned his spot on this team with a breakthrough season in AMA Superbike racing that saw him string together three wins in a row at one point. The tall, slender, and very likable former AMA 2S0cc Champion has joined the world tour as one of the two riders of an overmanned, neophytic, polyglot team onship at Donington Park, Edwards was effusive in his praise for the team. "It's not a matter of, well, he's out there. Leave it how it is. Things get done," Edwards said. After finishing outside the top lOin both races, there were fewer compliments. "This was a fiasco," he said after the Donington race. "We were changing tires, shocks, offset, linkages. It's all a guessing game," he said, and it showed. From the side of the track you couid see that the balance of Edwards' Yamaha was way off. The YZF Yamaha would squat on acceleration, then squirm, then go nowhere. And when he got to the next comer there wasn't enough weight on the front tire to inspire any confidence. After making the wholesale which happens to represent the greatest hopes of the second-largest motorcycle company in the world. Frenchman Christian Sarron, the former 250cc World Champion known for his gravity-defying crashes when he moved up to the SOOcc class, serves as . the team's sporting director. The crew chief is Italian Fiorenzo Fanale, who last worked on the Cagiva SOOcc team with John Kocinski and, before that, under Kel Carruthers on the Marlboro Agostini Yamaha teams. Taka Suzuki is the senior Japanese technician, supervising an international crew of mechanics. Edwards, of course, is Texan through and through, right down to the snuff that's stuffed behind his lower lip. Nagai, of course, is Japanese, and the team is run out of the headquarters of the Italian Yamaha importers, Be1garda. The result is an often contradictory, somewha t unpredictable operation. Before the third round of the champi- changes, the second race was better, though not by much. What has forced Edwards, and the team, into this position, are a number of factors. One is Edward's unfamiliarity with the tracks. Far too often he's still learning the track during the first race, and hoping to make it better in the second one. The team has yet to find its rhythm and often appears to be an exercise in barely controlled chaos, and Edwards does not yet have the experience of the veteran riders to lead the team. It will come. And there are the Ducatis, dominant last year, and more so this year with increased displacement and a longer swingarm that adds to stability. Finally, there's the question of tires. At the opening race at Hockenheim, a circuit where an undue amount of stress is put on the right side by the long, sweeping bend at the north end of the high-speed circuit, Edwards lost a foot-long section of rubber with about T 26