Can Nicky repeat?

[Yamadog]

I think he *can* but will he is a much longer reach. And he'll be starting the season recovering from surgery to repair damage much worse than preior thought as per soup.

[marc11]

No enough voting options.  I do not think he will repeat, and I do not think it will be Rossi who wins it either...

[bogthing]

It would seem to me, that for PR reasons alone, HRC would throw all efforts at getting Hayden in the most comfortable groove to help enable him securing another plate. If he stay's healthy, and get's the new unit sorted out to his liking, I believe the guy can do it. I'd also like to see Colin have a comeback year, or another american get in the mix.
 
Of course I know jack about the inner-workings of MotoGP, so this is all speculation.

[vguy]

It would seem to me, that for PR reasons alone, HRC would throw all efforts at getting Hayden in the most comfortable groove to help enable him securing another plate. If he stay's healthy, and get's the new unit sorted out to his liking, I believe the guy can do it. I'd also like to see Colin have a comeback year, or another american get in the mix.
 
Of course I know jack about the inner-workings of MotoGP, so this is all speculation.

Honda (and their strict team rules) does have a way of driving good people away when they reach the top. Rossi and Carmichael are the two most recent.

[bogthing]

Honda (and their strict team rules) does have a way of driving good people away when they reach the top. Rossi and Carmichael are the two most recent.

Yes, that's quite true. One never knows what evil lurks in the minds of those wizards. They've done some strange things over the years, some that would even seem to fly in the face of guaranteed success.
 
As I said before, pure speculation on my part.

[couchflyer]

marc11 is right on 100%  

No enough voting options.  I do not think he will repeat, and I do not think it will be Rossi who wins it either...

[JonS]

The championship will be Rossi's to lose if the Yamaha is competitive. Thats a big "if", but Rossi is also a great rider to develope a bike.
If not Rossi, then Capirossi or Mr. Personality, Danny Pedrosa. Oh yeah, it could also be Maro Melandri.

[X-Troller]

Isn't it funny all the other Honda riders including Nickey are saying the bike is low on power campared to the other 800's Petrobot isn't saying that in fact he is the fastest 800 out there and when Edwards was following him he said there was no way he could keep up! Who's going to get the good equiptment?

[cyeager]

New bikes mean that there are going to be a lot of variables. We cannot really tell what teams are going to have the fastest bike to work with this year and that is going to have an impact on the results (although it wont be definitive).

I think that Pedrosa stands to do *very* well, but i also believe that he has a better chance than most of getting himself injured. He is a truly skilled and fast rider, but he showed a tendancy last year of making mistakes at very inopportune moments, and no I am not just talking about taking out Hayden. There seemed to be a lot of little moments where Pedrosa seemed to be saved by luck alone, and you cannot keep going to that well and not expect to get hurt. The telling part is that these incidents seemed to occur at times when it wasnt necessary to take extra risks. Riders who know when to ride conservatively (like Hayden and Rossi) tend to have a better chance of scoring more points, and in the end that is what matters.