Double WorldSBK champion Colin Edwards has admitted that his 1983 FJ1200 is a fifth place bike, unless he and his crew come up with something amazing.
Edwards, who turned 43 today, told bikesportnews.com 'that’s all we have got right now' in terms of overall performance and lap time. Overnight, he and his team changed the engine and was only able to do a ‘scrub’ lap in another class before the opening International Challenge race this afternoon.
“You can’t really tell much, at speed when doing a scrub lap,” said Edwards, who won a total of 31 victories in his WorldSBK career out of a total of 175 race starts.
In race one, Edwards managed to get a pretty good start, but got swallowed up a bit. The Texas Tornado thought: “No stress, we’ll just try and keep them here.”
However, Edwards rolled off the throttle out of the Hayshed into Lukey Heights, went to downshift from fourth to third and hit a false neutral.
So, he pulled his clutch, which saw him running a wide line and grinding gears and trying to get it back in a gear, which resulted everything getting away from him.
“I came around the next lap, and I thought, 'Ok, just be real slow with the downshift, and that lap worked'. The very next lap I came around and the same thing happened. I went from fourth to neutral and back out to the white line and thought, this is just not worth it, as you would end up throwing the bike down the road,” explained Edwards after race one.
Edwards came in after race one and his shifter point was basically over centred and wasn’t working right. So, Edwards’ team got that working right and the right angle of the dangle and it was great.
The second race worked out really well, as Edwards didn’t miss a shift and I got a great start. However, that’s about all the pace that he has. Edwards’ fasted time in race conditions was a 1'38.337, which he posted on lap in the second heat on his fourth lap. The American admitted he needs half a second a lap and right now after about three laps he can’t feel the throttle or the front brakes.
“Turning the throttle is like turning an eighteen wheeler carburettor over,” joked Edwards, who currently sits in ninth place in the individual honours with 64-points to his name, one point behind UK’s Dan Linfoot and two points behind Aussie’s Paul Byrne and Edwards’ stable mate Jake Zemke.
Edwards did try Jason Pridmore’s Yamaha FJ 1200 throttle, which he said felt good, but for some reason his feels really heavy. “I’m trying to deal with that and getting pumped up and trying to grab the brakes with four fingers, which I never finger brake. However, it’s just easier to do it all at once, instead of separating the two fingers,” finished Edwards, who has so far claimed a 13-5 result.