American Colin Edwards II, the Texas Tornado, will retire at the end of the 2014 FIM MotoGP World Championship season, the 40-year-old Texan announced today during the pre-event press conference for the Red Bull Grand Prix of The Americas.
“In testing this year I could see that I need to change my riding style and it is against my instinct to ride differently so that has had an effect,” Edwards told reporters at Circuit of The Americas. “I want to spend more time with my wife and my children, and of course I want to say thanks to Yamaha and everyone who has helped me in my career.”
Edwards began racing motocross at the age of four and was a paid factory rider before he reached high school. After getting a bit burned out and stepping away from racing to be a regular kid during his early high school years, Edwards got into road racing in 1991.
Edwards completed his first full year of road racing (1991) by winning 13 Amateur/Novice National Championships at the WERA Grand National Finals and CCS Race of Champions and then immediately got his AMA Pro license and finished runner-up to Jimmy Filice in the AMA Pro 250cc GP on a street circuit in Miami before the year was done. The next season, 1992, Edwards beat Filice, Rich Oliver and future 500cc GP World Champion Kenny Lee Roberts to win the AMA Pro 250cc GP Championship.
Edwards was signed to Yamaha’s factory AMA Pro Superbike team for 1993 and 1994, and after a so-so start he won three of his last four races and was called up to ride for Yamaha’s World Superbike team beginning in 1995.
He then spent the next eight seasons racing in the FIM Superbike World Championship for Yamaha and Honda, winning 31 races and World Championships in 2000 and 2002. In 2002, Edwards came back from a 58-point deficit mid-season by winning the last nine races of the season, including the winner-take-all season finale at Imola against title rival Troy Bayliss.
In 2003, Edwards moved permanently to the MotoGP World Championship, where he rode for Aprilia, Honda and Yamaha factory teams before spending the last two seasons competing on Claiming Rule Teams. Edwards currently rides for the NGM Mobile Forward Racing team on an Open-Class FTR-Yamaha.
A MotoGP race win has eluded Edwards so far, but he has finished on the podium 12 times and qualified on pole position for MotoGP races three times.
In his spare time, Edwards co-rode to three victories (1996, 2001 and 2002) at the very prestigious Suzuka 8 Hours endurance race in Japan.
Edwards is married to his high school sweetheart Alyssia and has three children. They live in Conroe, Texas, just north of Houston, where Edwards operates his Texas Tornado Boot Camp riding school.
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