Mike Edwards and the FP1.

Mike Edwards has been racing for over twenty one years and it is that wealth of experience that the Foggy Petronas team had hoped to exploit during a test day at Snetterton. However the good old British weather got the better of man and machine, with Edwards crashing Garry McCoy's race bike - not the result that anyone had been hoping for.

Speaking exclusively to Crash.net Edwards explained what happened -"I was due to ride the bike, as Garry McCoy was injured in the run up to Brands, and Jack Valentine the team manager, who used to be the manager of V&M, said "How do you fancy riding as substitute for Garry McCoy at Brands?" on the assumption that he was going to fail the medical. He passed the medical so I didn't get the opportunity."

However, Jack Valentine didn't just give up on Edwards at that point, but offered him the opportunity to test for them. "The phone rang and it was Jack, he said "We've got a one day test at Snetterton, fancy it?" so I went down there and we were testing both Garry McCoy's bikes. It was a very interesting exercise, I did one twenty minute session on the bike, and then in the second session it had just started to rain and I got caught out with the conditions. Unfortunately, I crashed the bike and made a bit of a mess of it and that put me out for the rest of the day I'm afraid," lamented Edwards.

With all his race experience across many classes Crash.net was keen to learn what Edwards thoughts were on the Petronas machine. "It was very interesting, it wasn't set up for how I would set it up. Garry has a very unique riding style and set up configuration. If you were allowed to play with it at a test day I think it would be very good," he said.

He did however agree that top end speed is where it really falls down, "It lacks speed ultimately, lacks pure speed. When the format of the championship was 750 four strokes and thousand cc twins and that was a nine hundred triple, it fitted in much better but things have moved on and I think power wise it has been left behind. But from a handling perspective, it is extremely good and it is a very manageable bike. The team is very well set up but they are purely down on speed."

This season Edwards in racing in two Championships, the GSX-R European Cup and the Supermono Championship. "I got a phone call from Dan Harris, the editor of Fastbikes magazine, and he asked if I'd like to do it (GSX-R Cup) from a journalistic aspect, and I said yes as I thought it would be a great opportunity," he said "Its extremely tough, very close competitive racing, and I'm quite happy with eighth considering I've missed one round."

As for the Supermono Championship, things haven't gone quite to plan, as Edwards tell us "I was leading the Supermono Championship, but I crashed and broke my thumb at Assen, and handed the Championship to the guy I was tying points with. So he has won the championship."

When he isn't racing, Edwards is still on track, but this time at his own European race school, "I run a race academy, www.racedays.net, which is a race school in Europe. It is all over Europe - two weekends ago we were in the South of France, but we've been to Magny Cours, Dijon, we're going to Mugello in a couple of weeks and Cartagena between Christmas and New Year, it gets all over," he concluded