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Edited Date/Time
1/26/2012 6:24pm
is finally upon us...after final pre-season testing it looks as though Casey Stoner (Repsol Honda Team) is the title favorite coming into this weekends opening Grand Prix of Qatar. Defending champion Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha Factory Racing) will no doubt be right up front as well, and be joined by new teammate American Ben Spies. Spies has been a consistent top-5 finisher on the practice charts during winter testing.
Along with the afformentioned be sure to lookout for Valentino Rossi & Nicky Hayden (Ducati Team) as well as Stoner's teammates Dani Pedrosa & Andrea Dovizioso. My darkhorse for this up coming season is the 2nd year man on a 4th factory Honda, albeit on a privateer team (San Carlo Honda Gresini) is Marco Simoncelli.
Some pictures of testing from Qatar by http://www.motogp.com/
Nicky Hayden
Jorge Lorenzo
Valentino Rossi
Casey Stoner
Ben Spies
Marco Simoncelli
Along with the afformentioned be sure to lookout for Valentino Rossi & Nicky Hayden (Ducati Team) as well as Stoner's teammates Dani Pedrosa & Andrea Dovizioso. My darkhorse for this up coming season is the 2nd year man on a 4th factory Honda, albeit on a privateer team (San Carlo Honda Gresini) is Marco Simoncelli.
Some pictures of testing from Qatar by http://www.motogp.com/
Nicky Hayden
Jorge Lorenzo
Valentino Rossi
Casey Stoner
Ben Spies
Marco Simoncelli
Moto2 rookie and Future MotoGP World Champion, 18 yr. old Catalan Marc Marquez (Dani Pedrosa without all the injuries)
Andrea Iannone
My Moto2 pick is Kenan Sofuglu (riding in place of Shoya Tomizawa)
Shoya Tomizawa (October 10,1990-September 5, 2010)
The Shop
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
Free shipping: VITALMX
Bautista's year is over before it started, broken femur! Too bad, he had potential, not that the bike ever did.
Easiest prediction ever? Casey Stoner for the championship. I'm a Hayden fan and always will be but Stoner's got talent in spades and now he's on the best bike. I want a good season, but IMO all signs point elsewhere.
damn, hadn't heard that about Alvaro, must have happened yesterday or today...so that begs the question, with a 1 bike team, will Suzuki give American John Hopkins the ride. He is contracted to do a full BSB season for Crescent Suzuki, which is the UKs biggest Suzuki dealer, and he was doing some publicity stuff for Rizla Suzuki MotoGP this past week.
Just checked and it says that as of now Bautista is only out for Qatar, we shall see..."Wary that any injury to the Spaniard could leave it without anyone on the grid, the team has recalled its former rider John Hopkins as a standby rider - but he has only tested the bike in a brief filming session last weekend, and has since returned to America.
Hopkins, who had expected to race for Suzuki in British Superbikes this year, will however be the obvious choice substitute for the rest of Bautista's lay-off. He last raced in MotoGP with Kawasaki in 2008."
Phillip Island here I come!
Pit Row
the factory teams tend to get updates on a race by race basis, especially the "A" riders bike.
the satellites will start with a bike that is close to the factory squads spec at the beginning of the season, but they will only get periodic updates throughout the season. updates that are proven to work by the factory squad. so at any given point, a satellite bike could be 2-4 races behind a factory bikes tech.
the customer bikes tend to be last years bikes sold to a customer team. they tend to get maybe one or two updates throughout the season if they are lucky. at the moment, only honda has a true customer bike on the grid.
ducati has its factory outfit. and prmac, due to their longevity of relationship, is considered ducati's unofficial satellite team. but the fact is, every ducati bike on the grid is given true factory status if you can believe it. all bikes are updated equally. ducati really treats their customers well. prmac, cardion, and mapfre all are on GP11's.
one has to wonder tho if with rossi on board, if ducati will still employ the same strategy. they are a small company with limited budget. rossi is very demanding and it may be to the financial detriment of the customer bikes. ducati already dropped its factory superbike team to prepare for the cost of rossi.
honda has pulled out all the stops. the move they forced to get the rules changed to 800cc has backfired tremendously up to this point. they had the baddest 990 on the planet in 06.....and now fast forward to 2011 they finally have the bike of the class. one has to wonder tho if four factory bikes will spread them too thin. ive never been a fan of giving every rider on a team equal stuff. only one can win and history has proven than concentrated efforts win more often than communal ones. motorsports is only a "team sport" in livery alone. a lot of ego's in the honda garage. too much to juggle imo. if casey can pull it off it will be the most impressive thing ever. but i do expect them to sweep the podium a few times this year.
yamaha wanted to run four true factory bikes, but with rossi and lorenzo last year, it just wasnt in the budget. tech3's edwards and spies got shorted pretty hard. especially considering edwards is only really with yamaha due to his testing abilities. and tho tech3 is an official satellite team, by definition, they will always be a few races behind in development to the factory bikes. a total waste of edwards talent if you ask anyone in the know.
suzuki is a joke. had the opportunity to sell bikes to aspar a few years back and increase their numbers to 4 on the grid (as did kawi before they bowed out). thus get twice the amount of testing done if they were to give aspar quality stuff. they went the other direction and only have one bike. bummer for alvaro, as i would have liked to see what he could do as the factories sole effort, but im not sad to see a more mature and healthy hopper back on the grid either. he always had the zooks near the front in the 990cc days. but the 800s killed a lot of riders chances.
when talking contenders, there are only a few bikes designed to win on the grid. the factory yamahas and the factory hondas. imo ducati spreads themselves out too thin but with rossi that might change this year. stoner looks unbelievable right now, but he absolutely owns qatar so dont buy so much stock in him now. remember, he set pole position his rookie year on a customer LCR back in 2006. setting pole on a customer bike is almost unheard of.
contenders imo (in no particular order):
stoner - factory honda
dp - factory honda
simoncelli - satellite team/factory bike honda
j-lo - factory yamaha
spies - factory yamaha
and rossi simply cause you cant ever count him out. his preseason testing has been horrible. due to the bike or his shoulder injury is really unknown. i tend to think he's playing possum right now. perfect strategy for going against stoner. nobody plays the mind games better than rossi.
stoner WILL crack under the pressure if he lets rossi get in his head. and while jlo is a lot more headstrong, he dont have rossi on the other side of the garage doing all the testing leg work so his season could go either way at this point. imo, yamaha should have given edwards a third factory bike if they wanted the development of the m1 to continue as it did under rossi's direction. spies will be in it to the end imo.
not sure about dovi at the moment. i think hes a great rider. but hes got a lot of egos to battle in his own garage alone. i just dont see honda giving him the proper opportunity. and nobody screws over their riders with garage politics better than hrc.
hayden, hector, and de puniet all have a lot to prove right now if they want to go from the B group to championship contenders. barbera looks to be making that push. hayden is my fav, but its not easy being rossi's teammate. lets see, rossi, biaggi, then dp, and back to rossi. that has to be the worst list of teammates one could possibly have over a course of a career possible. somehow with his luck he will end up teammates with fernando alonzo to cap it all off.
capirossi is riding for a paycheck and the grid girls. hate to say it but hes done. hopefully the move back to 1000cc's will make him competitive again.
elias, what a dissapointment. but what else you gonna do on last years honda?
ayoyama....jury's still out. had a stellar career, but with what he's been acomplished so far in the premier class, just looks like the token jap on the grid at the moment.
karel....having fun with daddies money. more power to ya kid. i wish i was in your shoes. but on a serious note, hes more talented than given credit for.
crutchlow....in a good spot right now. just needs to do enough to stick around for a couple years and learn the series. solid talent in waiting should spies or jlo ever jump ship.
all that said, im not betting against rossi. thats my official pick for world champ once the dust settles. for no other reason than he's the goat. and goats always come out on top when the pressure's at its highest. spies is my darkhorse to win it all. his stock is selling for pretty low right now. i think its a good investment.
either way it should be great. 6 guys seriously capable of winning it all and will not be satisfied with anything less than a title. all on competitive bikes and several other riders on equal bikes as well. its always great when their are more quality rides than there is talent on the grid.
thats my synopsis.
I'm all for Stoner to win but deep down I'd rather Rossi the dude is just cool
oh and Hayden's bike looks awesome so does Lorenzo's even though he's a dick*
*my opinion (he is though)
that bike looks badass, stoner for the win though
With Rossi's departure Yamaha didn't manage to find a replacement sponsor, no one was interested to spend as much $$ as Fiat for Lorenzo and Spies.
I hate to break it to you Girls...
Crotch Buckets are for Fags
If it don't have knobbies.... it sucks.... just like NFL / NASCAR etc
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