Newshound - Rossi on the Ducati 800, well they need to sort out the front end for a start. Haydens only just getting above Mediocre on it, Melandri left after a season on it, and Capirossi could only finish 7th on it in 2007 a full 201 points behind his team-mate Stoner who won the championship with the same bike. Given Rossi's obvious and understandable recent trepidation in the early laps after his crash in Mugello, they need to sort that out as a priority. Even Casey, the only man who can ride the thing, has lost faith in it. For Rossi, with memories fresh of a crash where lack of feel left him with a bone poking through the skin, its got to be the number one fix.
As to how good Jorge is, well he was two wins to one up on Rossi when the latter binned it at Mugello. Whats probably more interesting are a couple of facts mentioned on Eurosport over the weekend. If Rossi had won all the races he missed he still would not have been World Champion, and perhaps a greater indication of Jorge's ability is if he scores 16 points next weekend (ie 3rd or above) he becomes the highest ever points scorer over a season - given that he has finished all but two races on the podium (and those in 4th) then theres a good bet he will achieve that milestone too. If he wins next weekend at home in Spain it will be half of this seasons 18 races he has won.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that next seasons going to be a belter. If Rossi, or more importantly Jeremy Burgess can work out a fix for the Ducati that is then spread across the other teams then you could see customer bikes like the Pramacs of RdeP and Loris fighting for podiums, as well as Aspars lad Barbera who is very underrated. Honda dont have a recognised bike sorter, but they do have some excellant racers in Stoner, Pedrosa, Simoncelli, Elias and Dovi - its whether they can harness all that power - my money would be on Casey to do that a la 2007. Suzuki are a right off unfortunately. Yamaha have two of the top 5 on their works bikes so look good for another strong year. 2012 should be better when we see some of these prod based engines from the WSB championship in Moto2 type chassis - Suters already running one of his modified chassis with a Beemer WSB motor in - they should let them run next year as an EVO type class in my opinion.
But for head to head racing 2011 has got to be better than 2010 - Jorge, Dani or Stoner have just run away most weekends.
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