By Larry Lawrence

Colin Edwards is in his tenth season of MotoGP and for the first time in his career he feels he has no chance of winning.

The source for Edwards’ frustration is racing a Suter-BMW, one of the new for 2012 CRT (Claiming Rule Team) machines. Edwards’ attitude towards his racing machine today is in stark contrast to how he felt in the pre-season when he first tested the Suter.

Edwards explained the CRT dilemma in a teleconference conducted by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway yesterday.

 “Well, whenever you see the prototypes getting faster and faster, and they are just getting further and further away from us. When we first started this gig in Malaysia, we were three seconds off the pace or 2.8 – whatever that numbers was – our thinking was that number would come down, and our development schedule isn’t nearly what the prototype guys are. And that gap has only gotten bigger. A lot of the stuff that we were conned into let’s say, we were going to have a new chassis every other week and blah, blah, blah, and you know the rest of the story. It just really hasn’t come to fruition. The gap is just getting bigger at the moment.”

On the ergonomics side of the Suter, Edwards says the problems are twofold – the size and seating position.

” The bike feels so small. It feels like you are sitting up on top of it. We have pulled the whole seat pad panel that was on the cushion; I just pulled it off. I will deal with my knees and legs later in life, but for now I need to get into the bike, and I am a little crunched up in the lower half, but it feels a lot better and I feel more in the bike.”

And then there’s the issue of the Suter’s electronics package, which Edwards has nothing but criticism. “My 2003 Aprilia had better electronics than what I am on now,” he says.

So Edwards is in a sort of MotoGP limbo at the moment. He wants to keep racing, but he would love to be on a bike that he’d at least have a shot at winning on. “Yeah, it would be nice to win again,” he admits. “I am not going to lie to you. You know, it would be nice to know that you line up on the grid and that you have every chance possible to win as the next guy. That is the way my DNA is programmed.”

So Edwards heads to the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix next week without much hope. When asked if Indy might be a better circuit for his CRT-spec machine he answered, “I have yet to be at a track where the CRT bikes work better anywhere than the prototypes.

“You know, to answer your question, I don’t know. At Laguna, honestly, the bike felt pretty good. The lap times were slow; all the CRT bikes were slow. All the lap times were slow, and when you have a short lifetime like that, I mean, it is the first time in my career that I got lapped. From 4 years old, obviously, I am not in the same spec of bikes as the leader, but that was kind of heartbreaking, to be honest with you. Indy, on the other hand, I don’t know. We are just going to have to go and see how far off we are, do the math, ride our ass off and see what happens.”