Colin Edwards' 2002 World Superbike
Championship-winning Honda VTR1000 SP-2W
By ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOS By HIROSHI OTA
registering 13 of his 14 seasonal race
victories before the watershed moment
in race two at Laguna Seca, when cool
Colin turned the season around. Thereafter, the Texan won every single race
for the rest of the year aboard his
Honda - nine victories in all, a new
championship record, as was his run
of 25 successive podium visits in a
season in whicb he scored II wins,
never DNFed on any occasion, and
never once mished lower than fouattt.
A worthy champion.
Same plaudit for the bike which
took him there, the Castrol Honda
SP-2W, which, under RC-51 badging
and in AMA trim, won the AMA
Superbike title with Nicky Hayden
aboard. Last November at SuzukII-,
t Colins . sthe chance came t
-twl in
trol-Iiveried world cfiirnp Oil Y
the· bike's third and "ll;.;al season of
VI rld Superbln content!o
(some record: two world titles;
one runner-up
slot, in three seasons of competition
before step, 'og down to BSB/AMA
national-level d i s
elusively for
2003 - though on
suJreJY:.liltl
tinue . evelopment to
sure of anothe
0
AtW'!,l~!). The test wa
sIde t e bik
ir
from, the
- SP-2W,
Edwards
and Katoli :IIook to victory in the 8 Hours.
Sadly,
one
of
nature's unfortunates among the
Japanese journalists
I was sharing the test
day with dumped the
Castrol bike big-time
before I got to ride it though fortunately not
before that artist of the
camera Hiroshi Ota had
caressed it naked and
unadorned with his lens,
as the pictures on these
pages show. But it meant
that, in the absence of
enough parts on hand for
HRC's pit crew to repair the
Castrol bike, I instead got to
wear a groove round Suzuka
aboard its identical twin (well, apart
from the Brembo brakes fitted instead
of Colin's preferred Nissins), the
Cabin-liveried endurance racer - the
e that gave birth to it in terms of
enhanced engine spec. We didn't quite
