On the Record: Colin Edwards

Indianapolis Motor Speedway recently hosted a teleconference with American MotoGP stars Colin Edwards and Ben Spies, both of whom are riding this season for the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha team. Journalists were asked to participate in the call, which was a precursor to the third running of the Red Bull Indianapolis GP scheduled for August 29. The event this year will include the 125cc and Moto2 classes.

This is Edwards' ninth year in MotoGP; he finished fifth overall in points in 2009. He is impressed with the new engine spec for the Yamaha YZR-M1. "We've got a lot more bottom end," he said. "Last year, we were struggling so badly with just having a little bit of pop off the corner; basically, we didn't have any. We had to play a lot with gearing just to get the rpm where we wanted it. Once the tires started going off, we had to run some crazy lines just to try to keep it in the power."I think this is the first time I've been on a Yamaha 800 that you can make a little mistake. You can run it in a little bit deep. You can square a corner off here and there. We've got that bottom end to help us out. To me, that's the biggest difference. Everything else feels pretty much identical to what it was last year."

I asked Edwards if the M1 had lost any top end. "I think we're the same," he replied. "We've only been to Malaysia and Qatar, but I think it's roughly about the same, maybe a little better. But we definitely haven't lost any."Each rider is limited to six engines for the entire 18-race season. Will six be enough? "Can I answer that in November?" he laughed. "I know what we've been running. Yamaha doesn't mess around; they want as much information as they can get, and we haven't had any problems—knock on wood. Are we going to have to shuffle around a bit and play with which engines get what time? I think everybody is going to have to do that. But I think we'll manage. I think we can do it."