Hey, everyone'll hate me but IDGF, Hayden is a top 10 or top 5 rider, he's not as good as a bunch of guys in GP. I'm not down on American riders, I'd love to see Edwards pick his game up but he may not get the chance if rumours that he's done after this year are true. Hopkins is good and needs to get some consistency and stop crashing. He seems to be doing pretty well at that this season which is good. I'm sure it annoys the crap out of him that every time he gets a good result Vermeulen goes one better (even though Hopkins is in front in points). I've never liked Hayden but that's probably because he's hardly won any races (he's up to what, 3 or 4 now?) and his championship was a technical win AFAIC. Yeah, he did well and deserved it because he obviously had the most points at the end of the year but talk about uninspiring wins. I know a lot of people don't care how you win the championship but for me, the best rider should win, not the guy with the most points. Most of the time the two are the same but I don't think that was the case last year. I guess it's kind of 80/20, 80% rider, 20% bike. Stoner for example is winning but Rossi's still a better rider but Yamaha hasn't given him a good enough bike IMO. Hayden's championship was more about reliability than actual speed. Yeah I know he had clutch problems, everyone else had more serious issues and more DNFs. Not to mention that all the main contenders for the title were taken out in the Catalunya crash by Sete Crashernau, missed races and then were injured when running several other races.
Did he deserve the championship? Yep.
Was he the best rider? Nope.
Is his form thus far this year indicative of his actual skill? Nope.
Should he have stayed at Honda? No fucking way.
The writing was on the wall last year, Honda was always going to favor Pedrobot, I feel genuinely sad for Nicky that he's still with those assholes. He had an offer to go to Ducati too. Ah well, maybe the new chassis stuff (that they gave to Pedrobot first!!!) will work better for him and he'll improve. I don't think he's going to do any better this year in terms of wins though. Maybe Laguna but we'll see.
I still can't believe that Honda would do such a poor job of supporting their reigning world champion it's really quite disgusting.
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