Looking Back At 2013 - Rating The Rest: Edwards And Petrucci
Submitted by David Emmett on
After rating the top ten finishers in the championship, it is time to turn our gaze to those outside the top ten worthy of note. Here is a view of Colin Edwards and Danilo Petrucci, two riders who both exceeded expectations in 2013.
| Colin Edwards | NGM Mobile Forward Racing |
| Championship Position | 14th |
| Score | 7/10 |
Colin Edwards was thirty-nine years of age when he lined up on the grid for the first race of 2013, and facing questions over his ability to keep competing. His performance had been slipping since losing his spot in the factory Yamaha team, reaching a low point in his first year with the NGM Forward team on the Suter BMW. Was he perhaps too old? Did he really have the motivation to compete at this level?
The former question is still open, but the switch to the FTR Kawasaki gave Edwards the chance to show that he still cared enough to keep racing. Much better handling and above all, being freed from the shackles of the BMW's electronics made the FTR Kawasaki a much easier package to ride. Edwards looked much more at home on the bike, regularly making it into Q2 in the second half of the season. The Kawasaki CRT bike was still lacking too much power to take the fight to the factory prototypes, but Edwards was the only rider to challenge the outright dominance of Aleix Espargaro among the CRT riders.
With the arrival of the leased Yamaha package at NGM Forward, Edwards found another motivational boost. After the test at Valencia, Edwards was positively chirpy, sure to be much closer in 2014 than he has been for a long while. There is life in the old dog yet.
