Edwards will ride a Honda RC211V in 2004.
Edwards in his last ride on the Cube.He won't come out and say it, but it's clear Edwards is happy to see the back of the Aprilia.
Edwards is a two-time World Superbike champion—both times on a Honda. His wins at Imola in 02 were epic and God-like.
Edwards II and Kenny Roberts Junior once graces the cover of American Roadracing as young guns--in 1992.
Edwards in one of his first rides on the Cube. On the fourth lap of his first spin on the beast it spit him off.
The Cube is super-fast and maybe, just maybe too high-tech.
Edwards signing his Aprilia contract. You can't see it, but the contract has an alarming number of zeros on it.

I spoke with American GP rider Colin Edwards last week about his first season as a GP rider in Europe. Edwards was slightly jet-lagged (he'd just returned to Texas from Europe the day prior)but he spoke in his usual honest and forthright manner. The former AMA 250 GP champion spent this season on the hyper-fast Aprilia Cube MotoGP bike and moves to a Honda 211V for 2004. He spoke candidly about it all.

Q. You spent ten years on a quest to get into GP. You've put in your first season now. Can you reflect on it?

A. Basically, it was everything I expected. There's a lot more interest, a lot more spectators, fans, It was that way in Superbike, you had your die-hard Ducati fans who didn't care who rode the bike, your Aprilia fans, etc. There wasn't anything that I was surprised about in regards to the series, nothing caught me out. It's fun. But it's also a lot of work.

Q. Was it an important moment for you when the series traveled to Jerez and you saw 150,000 people in the hills watching the race?

A. That was a lot like Brands (World Superbike). Brands is actually more intimate. You pack 110,000 or 150,000 people into Brands and there's nowhere to walk, you know. At Jerez and Valencia, it's a little more spread out there so it doesn't actually seem as packed as Brands.

Q. You somehow missed the entire 500 era in Grand Prix. For a kid who grew up on two strokes, that's got to be a regret.

A. It's funny, whenever I went and tested the 500 in 1999 at Phillip Island, it felt, even though I have been riding four-strokes since 1993, I've always felt like I was still getting used to a four-stroke. Like I was still learning four-strokes. And then whenever I jumped on that 500 in 1999, I felt like it was home. That's what I grew up doing, you know? I grew up on two stroke dirt bikes.

I would have liked to have done 1-2 years on a 500. But at the same time, I was doing other things. I can't say I regret it, but yeah, it would have been nice.

Q. And it's not like the time spent wasn't without accomplishment. On another subject, I thought it was reported that you re-signed with Aprilia in the 2003 mid-season. How is it that you then signed with Honda for 2004?

A. I had talked with Gresini and Pons earlier in the season. And a few others, throughout the year.

Basically, it came down to money and a lot of what was going on at Aprilia.

I think, I had the blinders on at Aprilia. I was so focused on my job at hand that I knew we were going to get this thing running right, get it turned around. I think that's a problem when you have so much self-belief. Sometimes you can't see the real picture unless it's thumping you in the forehead. That's where I was on it.

It was the middle of the season and the results weren't what we wanted. We had some decent races and some bad races but when things went right it wasn't bad. I was just convinced that it was all going to turn around, the lady as going to come and sprinkle fairy dust on the bike and everything was going to be wonderful.

Like I said, I had the blinders on to try and get the bike competitive.

Then it was about the time of Motegi that I said to myself, 'I'm giving blood this weekend', pouring everything I have into it. Let's see what the best we can do is'. And I had already been thinking the other direction around then (going to Honda).

Then, after Motegi ... the first turn crash didn't help things; it was before that. Through qualifying I was taking too many chances, way too many risks to qualify, what, 13th or 14th on the grid. That was really where I made up my mind there.

Q. The Aprilia is probably the most technically advanced bike on the grid. Pneumatic valves, fuel injection, counter-rotation crank, ride by wire throttle, and probably ten other things we don't know about. But, what would you say if someone said to you that the bike is too trick, that it needs to be dumbed down in order to go faster.

A. Is it too trick? I don't know about that. But, I think when you have stuff that's at the pointy end of the development period you've got to have the people who thought of and designed the stuff to be there while it's being raced. That's my opinion. You need the guys who thought of or built the ride by wire stuff, or Cosworth motors, you need to have those people there. Instead, they build it over here, and then they just give it to the Aprilia guys and say 'Here you go'.

Too trick. Possibly. Actually I would not say too trick. I'm just not convinced that car technology works on motorcycles.

But my feeling is that in two years, or three or five, everybody is going to be on ride by wire. Because it is definitely the future. It just needs to be refined for a motorcycle.

Q. You definitely had some good rides on the Aprilia this season; the season book-ended well. But there were some bad times as well, including the bike starting on fire underneath you at Sachsenring. How does a rider mentally put an incident like that out of his head?

A. That's a good question. There were a couple of incidents throughout the year that scared me, I guess. Made me uneasy might be a better way of putting it. One of them obviously was the fire, but at the same time that was just a mistake. The mistake being that the bike has to have its gas cap taken off in order to start the bike. See, that shouldn't be. So, as much as you can say a mechanic forgot to tighten the gas cap, before that, the fact that you need to pop the gas cap in order to get the bike to work correctly is just wrong.

The fire was actually pretty easy to get out of my head. That was, on the surface, just a silly mistake.

Something like, after Portugal I went and tested at Jerez and broke a little oil line down under the motor. We had just broken it, then we went to Brazil and I broke another one while I was on the track. I looked behind me once to see if anybody was behind me and I saw a friggin' big plume of white smoke. There was a third gear flat out corner coming up. I just pulled off the side of the (track) and looked underneath and the belly-pan was full of oil. Not a couple splatters—I'm talking a couple of inches of oil.

A couple of incidents like that and I was starting to think, 'Whew, I dodged another bullet.' I could probably count on a half of one hand how many times I came in this year with oil all over my boot.

One time happened to be at the last race. And funny enough, our project leader, as soon as I came in after the race on Sunday, he came over with a little syringe full of oil and squirted oil all over my left boot.

He said, 'Just so you remember what your year was like'. (Laughs)