RACE STUFF THREAD

Quote from: Pinocchio on June 23, 2010, 01:57:05 PM

A completely neutral, absolutely gutless corporate office choice. A test rider in a factory seat? If I were a Yamaha fan, I'd be pissed off.

Who will u replaced with? Spies cant go Rules say no Rookies in Factory bikes, Edwards says he get paid by Monster, wouldnt leave those guys who pay him to go race for FIAT...

Cratchlow said no because he chases the championship in WSBK... Hayes chases the championship in US...

U know anyone else at Rossi's Level?

i dont see anyone else taking Rossi's place!

and read this...

Quote

Texas Tornado interview....

RRX: What’s your take on the season so far?

Colin Edwards: The season so far’s been shit. The first three races were the same thing, same problem—just let off the brake, the front would pop up, too much weight on the rear, sliding around, doesn’t turn. At Mugello, we sorted that out and had the bike working really good, but the way our bike is set up, it’s too much angle on the front, heavy. As of today with our bike, to get into the corner, you don’t have to do anything: you just let go of the thing, it’ll just keep turning forever and ever and ever—it will not come up automatically, even with the gyro effect. So we need to do something with angles and geometry to get it to pop itself up a little bit—help out a little bit. At Mugello, the only way you could do it is just go slower and slower and slower, just to get the apexes. If you wanted to go the speed you wanted, you’d run off the track trying to get it turned back over—just exhausting. We’re struggling, but we’re trying to get it better. Also, being second-to-last and last on the speed chart at Qatar—that wasn’t a good sign.

What are your thoughts on Valentino Rossi’s injury?

It’s a bummer. My initial thought is that it’s motorcycle racing—shit’s going to happen, and he’s been so freaking lucky throughout the years. He’s never missed a start. I missed most of ’97, broke to shit. Lorenzo’s been broke up, Pedrosa was broke up—everybody’s had to pay their dues. It’s motorcycle racing—shit can happen. Fortunately for him, it hasn’t happened earlier, but it did happen. It’s just a ticking time bomb.

Since he got hurt, there’s some talk about the tires not heating up quickly enough, or not retaining heat.

There’s no truth in that. Somebody says that if they’re left-wing [laughs]. “Hey, we need money—we’ve got to eat.” Well, go get a job! If you want to warm your tire up, spend the time to warm your tire up. It’s your responsibility on your own. You look at the old days—Wayne Rainey broke himself up so bad for a cold-tire crash in Hockenheim. It is what it is. Do I take more time than most? Probably. My first lap’s not fast, my second lap’s probably not going to be as fast. Generally, I like to take time to know. I’ve had a cold-tire snap, and it’s not fun—not fun. Racing’s a little different; you put your lap on the tires and go out—you’ve got to push and do whatever—but in practice, I like to know that it’s sorted out.

Many people have said you make a lot of sense as a substitute for Valentino Rossi, in part because you’re old friends.

I think that’s probably a big part of it, from what I’ve been told. Obviously, he has a say-so, somewhat, on who’s going to ride his bike. The advantages are getting on a factory bike, factory chassis, factory whatever, and having that much better of a chance of putting in some results. The disadvantages are I don’t know what engine’s going to be in it—it’s an unknown. I don’t know how myself and JB [Jeremy Burgess] would work, and all those guys. I don’t want to go there and waste their time. How the hell is anybody supposed to fill Valentino’s shoes? The other side of that is I’m not paid by Yamaha. I’m paid by Herve [Poncharal], and Herve has his own team, and we have Monster and DeWalt, and Motul, and Leo Vince. We’ve got these guys that he’s basically sold the team to them with me and Ben. Well, how’s it doing to look [if I leave]? My relationship with DeWalt, Motul, Leo Vince—all these guys really like me, and there’s definitely a big loyalty to them. They’ve signed up as us being the riders, so we have to look at the future. If Yamaha were to say, “We want you to come ride this bike,” we’re kind of hanging these guys out to dry, and you’ve got some other ding-dong coming in to fill my spot. I don’t think they’ll be happy about that. My own opinion is it’s a Fiat Yamaha problem; you sort it out—don’t bring us into your problem. At the moment, that’s my opinion.

I think Cal Crutchlow has an opinion that’s similar to yours. Is it also a case of riders not wanting to appear as if they’re trying to fill Valentino’s shoes?

There’s a flipside to this too: I’m 36 years old. Why do I want to put that much pressure on my shoulders, to fill his spot? That bike has seen the podium probably more than any bike in the paddock. I think the bike is better than what we have, but I think the rider that’s ridden that bike for a number of years is the best guy out there [laughs]. So do I want to put that much pressure on myself? Not really.

As you said, you’re 36. How much longer would you like to keep going?

I think one more year. I don’t know—just a little bit. Hell, we qualified fifth at Mugello. I felt good, and the speed’s good; we just need to get the bike easy enough to run like that for twenty, twenty-five laps. We’ve got some big changes coming—we’ll get it working. I still feel motivated. I’m still happy doing what I’m doing. I don’t know about my wife—she’s not happy with me leaving all the time. I think my wife looks forward to the day that I can come home, but at the same time, after about two weeks, she’ll be like, “When are you going to leave again?” [Laughs] It’s one of those catch-22 things: sounds good—not a good idea. We’ve been doing this shit for twenty years. We know how it is right now, and it works.

What about after you do retire?

Did I tell you about the camp we’re building? I have a piece of property that I had a shop on—just kind of a catch-all. I’d go and ride bikes, built a little track for my kid. Now we’re building a Wild West saloon that sleeps about thirty people. We’re covering pretty much a football field—300 feet by 150 feet—with a big, metal roof structure; I can’t have people coming from England or Italy or whatever to do a camp and get rained out—“Come back next week.” I have to have that place, but at the same time, we have three other tracks that we can ride on outside, plus the football field that will be flat clay. We’ve got five acres for paintball in the back, with a full paintball course set up. We’ve got a 500-yard shooting range on the left side that’s going to be the jailhouse. So we’ve got the Wild West saloon, we’ll have the jailhouse. It’ll be an experience, where you come out there and learn. You arrive Friday, stay Friday night and Saturday night, leave midday Sunday, so a two-and-a-half-day camp. We pick you up at the airport, you sleep out at the saloon, we cook everything, have campfire stories. We’ve got so many activities planned because as everybody knows, you can’t ride motorcycles twelve hours a day. There’s just nothing like it—there’s nobody with a name that’s done something like this lately. You don’t have a rental car, no hotel bill—get your plane ticket, come, and we take care of you.

When will you start it?

I’d like to get a couple of dry runs with some local bike shops October-ish. It’s being built right now. I think I’ve had 2,700 loads of dirt brought in there—all nice, red, pretty clay. It’s going to be TT-R125s, smooth tires on the rear, knobbies on the front. We’ll have some big bikes there too, just to clown around on. The whole thing is everything I ever learned, I learned there first. When I was young, we had XR100s, like at Kenny’s [Roberts] ranch. You learn how to slide it, learn the feel, learn the fundamentals at a much smaller risk and much slower speed, then apply that to your road race bike or whatever. It’s called Texas Tornado Bootcamp.