MotoGP News
Date: 10/April/2012
Former double World Superbike champion Colin Edwards begins his tenth expletive ridden season of MotoGP with a brand new challenge at Qatar this weekend.
“I don’t know where the time had gone!” smiled Edwards. “It’s been great though, especially seeing the likes of Lorenzo and Casey [Stoner] grow up here in the paddock. I remember playing on the PlayStation with Casey when he was a kid.”
Texan Edwards is the biggest name to sign up for MotoGP’s new ‘Claiming Rule Team’ class for 2012, which will see budget Superbike-powered machines allowed onto the premier-class grid alongside the official manufacturer bikes.
“Does anyone know the Claiming Rules? I’m still trying to figure that out,” he joked, referring to the complicated and strangely named privateer class which will form nine of the 21 MotoGP entries this season.
Edwards will be racing a BMW-powered Suter chassis, run by Forward Racing, which is stepping up from the intermediate Moto2 World Championship.
The switch from an exotic Yamaha prototype to a small-scale project, still very rough around the edges, has been tough at times. Indeed, Edwards is still facing ’fundamental’ issues such as problems with the location of the engine mounting points on the S1000RR road-bike engine.
“In Texas we’d say it’s been like shovelling s**t uphill some times,” said Edwards. “That’s what it felt like in testing. We have fundamental issues that we need to sort.
“We’ll also be showing up to each race this year with no gearing, no suspension settings, no data. Nothing. We’ll be starting from scratch at every round. But we’ve just got to go step-by-step.”
Despite his often coarse comments, fan favourite Edwards - who has twelve MotoGP podiums to his name - is highly regarded for his development skills and admits he was the ideal candidate to lead the CRT revolution.
“If there’s one guy in this paddock who had to do it was me, with the experience and knowledge riding the Aprilia, Honda and Yamaha,” said the 38-year-old. “It’s going to be a long project, but if they do decide to make MotoGP all-CRT at some point in the future it will make things interesting.”
Edwards will start his first race as a CRT rider at Qatar on Sunday evening. It will also be his first grand prix since being injured in the tragic accident that claimed the life of Marco Simoncelli at Sepang last October.
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