olin Edwards settled into the couch in his
motorhome, a wad of snuff in his lower
lip, the disappointment of an unfulfilling
season beginning to show. " N o t happy,
not happy at all," he said about his finish in
the Grand Prix of Catalunya, his best of the year.
Qualifying on the fourth row meant starting with a
deficit that was difficult to e rase . Qualifying isn't his
strong suit. It goes against all his natural inst incts .
"Y u're out the re all weekend on stuff, sliding and
o
spin ning. T hen they say 'Now you can pin it .?' he said,
shaking his head about qualifying strategy on supersticky one-lap specials. "Y u just have to trust your life
o
and your balls with it. It's just not nice."
Once in the race he moved from one scrum to anoth-
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JUNE 30, 2004 •
C Y CLE N EWS
er, the riders improving as he slowly moved forward . He
came up on old friends Troy Bayliss and Ruben Xaus . In
vivid, indelible detail, he described the crash of Bayliss
that miraculously didn't take out Xaus . "You could do it
nine million more times, and it wouldn't happen."
The crash gifted him a spot, and he got another later
that lap.
Attrition too k out Nicky Hayden and Alex Barros and
Makoto Tamada and Kenny Roberts Jr., and Max Biaggi
had a de fective tire . And in time Edwards found himse lf
in fifth place, his best of the year but as empty as any of
his lesse r placings.
He wasn 't quite t hrough discussing the race when he
paused and asked if I had time, if I'd like to know how he
came to this place. I said I did , then he spit out a plug of
40th Anniversary
snuff large enough to choke a schnauzer and explained
why Honda doesn't look like Honda t his year.
Sete Gibernau, Edwards' teammate, makes the same
point as Edwards, but in different language. He explains
that the Yamahas had traction at Catalunya and the
Hondas didn 't . That the Honda had to run a harder tire.
'And that for sure has been the clue of the whole
race," said Gibernau , the Spanish MotoGP Wo rld
Championship leader. "Y u can see at the end of the
o
race t hat the Yamahas are not so bad. I'm surrounded by
Yamahas. And right now I t hink toget he r with Honda we
nee d to start w orki ng very hard to bring up the pace
because we have good power on the bike, but Yamaha
has done an unbel ievable job ."
It began in preseason testing. In Malaysia and
