Colin Edwards, Nicky Hayden and John Hopkins share a few words about their impressions and expectations going into the MotoGP round at Australia’s, Phillip Island. The Americans have done pretty well there in the past but each of them are hoping to improve on their previous results.

Colin Edwards: “It’s everything here. The track, you’ve got fifth-gear corners, first-gear corners, camber, off-camber, elevation, and they’ve managed to squeeze all of that in 12 turns. It has a mixture of everything. The people here are great, the food’s great, the scenery’s great, the ocean is right there. I don’t know what’s not to like about the place. After the last few races I’ve had, which have been ultimate disasters, it feels good to come back (with seventh-place finish at Japan), just to get my toe wet again. I’m looking to end the year on a high note.”

Nicky Hayden: “I love Phillip Island. I don’t think there’s a better racetrack in the world, but I wish we could race there when the weather’s a little bit better. Sometimes it can be more like Phillip Iceland than Phillip Island. A lot of tracks, they keep slowing them down, adding chicanes for safety, but this one you can really turn it on. There’s some real fast stuff, so it’s a track where you can get in a rhythm when the bike’s working and go fast. And when the bike’s not working, you can be pretty slow. You spend a lot of time on the edge of the tires, so it’s probably the hardest track in the world for tires. I’ve had some good results there, a couple of pole positions, a second and a third, but I’ve never won one there. You need a bike setup that saves the tires, plus you need to be able to steer through the long corners and change direction. It’s easy to lower the rear and soften things up to get traction, but then you lose the steering.”

John Hopkins: “I’ve not always had the best results at Phillip Island in the past, so it’s certainly a track where I’d like to do well. We made a lot of changes to the bike in Japan, and although the race result wasn’t what I’d hoped for, we definitely had a strong pace. We were able to lap a lot more consistently, and it was definitely a big improvement on our recent races. I really want to achieve some strong results in the last few rounds of the season, while also focusing on developing our Ninja ZX-RR for the 2009 season.”

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