Rossi.
Congratulations to Rossi for winning the 2006 years championship.
I'll say it now as the championship is all over bar the shouting after the crashes at the Catalyna GP, and Rossi will win the title.
Hayden has a slim hope to no hope of winning (and I think Slim just left town g0nn3 ) as Rossi is (only) 29 points behind with 10 races left.
Not counting this season Hayden has been in GPs for 3 years and I think the statistics stack against him. Totting up 17 races per season and the 7 races of this year plus an odd few in his first year, that's about 60 GPs under his belt BUT he has only won one. Rossi on the other hand in 60 odd races has won 35 plus, are you getting the picture......
For Hayden to win the championship he will have to pull at least 3 wins out of the bag from the remaining 10, which I can't see him doing given his track record.
Of course Rossi doesn't even have to win all the races, finishing in front of Hayden in every race will give him enough points for the championship.
With the very sad racing incident of last week, 3 of the main title contenders won't be fully fit for at least a month and although they might race surely their respective injuries will stop them racing at full pace, and sadly their title hopes for 2006 are gone.
The only one that just might have managed to step up to the mark and nick some points would be Pedrosa but in reality with another DNF his chance has now gone up in smoke.
The problem for Hayden is that Pedrosa is, in effect, a bit of a loose cannon. Hayden will have to do his level best to finish in front of Pedrosa for all of the remaining races, because for every race that Pedrosa scores over Hayden his chances of winning the title (discounting Rossi) get slimmer and slimmer and surely Honda will have thought of that.
For me what started out as a good championship has now fallen flat on it's arse, of course Rossi missed all the crashing ('cos he's a jammy bastid) so he has only really Hayden to worry about, and I don?t suppose Rossi is loosing too much sleep over that!
It's just too pie in the sky, I just cant see Hayden winning 3 GPs :dunno: .
Will Stoner manage to stay on board long enough to take any points off Hayden? .....we shall see..
But from now 'till the end of the championship Rossi has got all the aces stuffed firmly up his Italian sleeve.
So well done Rossi for winning this years championship.
Zippo.