Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Colin Edwards II i~le By Henny Ray Abrams 'E "I I III I!II II iii Q • '" ~ ..;~ ~ 4: 6 his is not how he wanted it to start. Castrol. Honda's Colin Edwards 11 feels that 'this year's World Superbike campaign is his best chance ever to win the World Superbike crown. With a year on the Honda RC45, a year on Michelin tires, and a year on a new team under his belt, the Texan sees no reason why he can't win 10 races and the title. However, in last week's season opener at Kyalami, Edwards didn't live up to his own advance billing. But there was a reason. An injury suffered during a test at Laguni3 Seca less than two weeks earlier nearly put him out of the race entirely. As it was, Edwards fought through the pain of the badly bruised right shoulder to card a fifth and a fourth at the South African track. Teammate Aaron Slight took a second and a third in the races, both of which were won by Ducati's'CarI Fogarty. Edwards now has a little lime to let the shoulder heal. The next race isn't until April 18 at Phillip Island in Australia, so the Texan has three weeks of rest ahead. Though he's only 24 years old, Edwards has been a part of our collective racing consciousness for a very long lime. After making a splash at the Daytona AMA/ CCS races in 1991, Edwards advanced to the AMA 250cc Grand Prix class. The season will be remembered for the battles he had with Kenny Roberts Jr. Edwards prevailed in the end, taking the 1992 250cc GP title, and only finished behind Roberts once, taking a fourth at Charlotte to Junior's third. Then he moved up to a Vance & Hines Superbike, riding the Yamaha Yz:F750 to sixth in his inaugural year in the class in 1993. The 'following season was something of a breakthrough. Edwards won his first AMA Superbike National race at Mid-Ohio, following it up with wins in successive races at Brainerd and Sears Point. He ended the season in fifth and earned a ride on the Yamaha World Superbike team. The first year was a struggle and he ended up 11th, improving to fifth in 1996, before injuries curtailed his season and dropped him to 12th in 1997. His riding was impressive enough that he earned the right to replace John Kocinski on the Castrol Honda team, the year after Kocinski won Castrol Honda's only World Superbike title. Last season was a revelation. For the first lime, he understood what it was like to race for a first-class team on a machine that is competitive in most circumstances, and lethal in some. Monza was a perfect example. Into his third season and winless, Edwards did the double at Monza, with Slight second in one leg and a certain second in the next, when his engine let go late in the race. Edwards would add one more win before the end of the year, finishing the season in fifth place. Early last year, he thought he was finally on a team that could take him to the title. It didn't, but he knows why. This seemed like a good place to start. QYOUchampionship that that hadyou didn't, to was said last year you the tools the and win if it your own fault. AYeah. Even though I didn't win, at this point I don't feel it was my own fault. We had a problem with the bike, basically, and up to that point it had been going not so bad. You can understand, at Albacete (Spain); I'd just won two races at Monza (Italy) and I was psyched. But we had a front-end problem with the bike and it was hit-or-miss, and we kept misdiagnosing it, thinking it was something to do with the rear squat~ ling too much and blah, blah, blah. Realistically, it was a front-fork problem that we had. Q When did you discover it? A-We discovered it at the last race. I'm out there try.t"'\..ing to qualify at Sugo (Japan) and it crashed in the same comer - a day apart from one another. The bike was set up completely different - completely different front fork, completely different shock, different tires, different everything. But my footpeg - where it actually dug into the concrete couldn't have been two inches apart. Exactly the same crash. So there was one thing that was the same and it was in the front fork; it was something internally that we knew was the same. We didn't have time at the race, seeing as that was the last .day of qualifying. So then, back to the (international) race, whenever Mick (Doohan) and (Tadayuki) Okada came over, we had a plan and we fixed the bike, fixed the- front fork, and went 32 seconds quicker in 25 laps. That's over a second a lap. So that proved it to me even though Aaron (Slight) was 11 seconds quicker, which had to do with a different tire we had. There was another 21 seconds there tha t I was quicker and tha t came from the bike, basically. It just allows for a lot more feel, and now, when you lose the front, when you fold the front, you can get it back. And before, when you folded the front, it went away and you couldn't get it back, and I'd crash. Now it's just so much better. When you were chasing that problem, what else Q were you changing? A-Basically, we thought it was a big problem with the r t V-four liesign. A lot of weight up high, a lot of transfer. Down on the front under brakes, down in the back under power. It was just transferring a lot. And we thought it was kind of incurable - couldn't fix the thing. But we proved ourselves wrong and we were working in the wrong area. We were working in the back, trying to keep it from squatting, when all we were doing was forcing ourselves to lose traction, and it was at the front that we needed to be working. And we dealt with that all year. To my knowledge, I didn't know that there was one same thing in all our front-fork specs; there was one thing that was the same in all of them and that's what needed to be changed, and we just went around in circles all year. QAnd that's why you were inconsistent. Exactly. And it was hit-or-miss. Some tracks, like onza and AIbacete, weren't so bad. In the rain, it worked halfway-decent - Nurburgring (Germany). Some places it worked okay and some places, like where Aaron (Slight) won two races at Austria, we should've been there. We had, I feel, the fastest bike out there. The way Aaron's style is, he rides over the front a lot. He keeps the front loaded, he keeps it down. Well, my style's not like that. As soon as I get off the brake, the front pops up and it wants to fold on me. After that weekend, too, I thought, 'Man, there's something definitely not right that we have got to fix: And we worked at it and worked at it and we never found it until the last race of the season. Q The rain races were up and down. A-In the rain races is where I think we're going to .t"'\..improve the most with this fork setting. Beca use we're going to have-so much feel. We didn't have a lot

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