just a few quotes from colin edwards on what he thinks about rossi on the yamaha next year.
Q. I'll put you on the spot. Do you think Rossi can win on a Yamaha?
A. Rossi is pretty special because he's fast and has loads of talent. But my own personal opinion is that Yamaha could have saved a bucket load of money and just tried to hire ten or fifteen of Honda's engineers to build them a bike. They would have had to almost kidnapped them and forced them to work, but that's what they should have done, hired the engineers, not the racer.
Q. Why?
A. There's a development process that goes into a motorcycle that the rider doesn't really see. The very initial design and the first baseline. I've developed bikes on the track for my entire career and I'll tell you that the most important part is that you need to be given good pieces. It's key. You can ask for things, but a lot of the progress comes from the development riders back at the factory.
Sure, you can ask for better traction or better steering or more power, better weight-transfer or more squat, but when it gets to the track, you're given a bike to finish. These are the kind of things a rider expresses. A rider doesn't say 'We need 2.5 millimeters more here and seven millimeters there'. That's not what we do.
And that's where Honda are so good. They know what to give you. They're always thinking like two steps ahead of the rider. Their test riders are pretty damn good, so they have ideas of what to do as soon as you request something. You say, 'It needs this' and back in Japan they have already tested two possible solutions and have data to study. And they have five different ideas on where to go from there.
ENDS
Q. I'll put you on the spot. Do you think Rossi can win on a Yamaha?
A. Rossi is pretty special because he's fast and has loads of talent. But my own personal opinion is that Yamaha could have saved a bucket load of money and just tried to hire ten or fifteen of Honda's engineers to build them a bike. They would have had to almost kidnapped them and forced them to work, but that's what they should have done, hired the engineers, not the racer.
Q. Why?
A. There's a development process that goes into a motorcycle that the rider doesn't really see. The very initial design and the first baseline. I've developed bikes on the track for my entire career and I'll tell you that the most important part is that you need to be given good pieces. It's key. You can ask for things, but a lot of the progress comes from the development riders back at the factory.
Sure, you can ask for better traction or better steering or more power, better weight-transfer or more squat, but when it gets to the track, you're given a bike to finish. These are the kind of things a rider expresses. A rider doesn't say 'We need 2.5 millimeters more here and seven millimeters there'. That's not what we do.
And that's where Honda are so good. They know what to give you. They're always thinking like two steps ahead of the rider. Their test riders are pretty damn good, so they have ideas of what to do as soon as you request something. You say, 'It needs this' and back in Japan they have already tested two possible solutions and have data to study. And they have five different ideas on where to go from there.
ENDS
