(Unverified) Reports Claim Rossi Improving on Aluminum Frame

[Ghost]

^Don't get me wrong, I'm not counting him out due to age, just saying that I think his number of championship seasons ahead of him are far fewer than those behind him. Even the best have to retire eventually, and I'm not sure how far off his expiration date is.

I'd rather see him go out on a win than dick around like Michael Jordan did in basketball.

I'd love to see bikes go back to being a test of skill and finesse and balls, like the 500s or the 990s--so I'm hoping the GP12 bike and the 2012 season take us back to something like 2006, which was one of my (semi) recent favorites.

[The Black Knight]

^Don't get me wrong, I'm not counting him out due to age, just saying that I think his number of championship seasons ahead of him are far fewer than those behind him. Even the best have to retire eventually, and I'm not sure how far off his expiration date is.

I'd rather see him go out on a win than dick around like Michael Jordan did in basketball.

I'd love to see bikes go back to being a test of skill and finesse and balls, like the 500s or the 990s--so I'm hoping the GP12 bike and the 2012 season take us back to something like 2006, which was one of my (semi) recent favorites.

I agree, go out on top and retirement is just that much more sweeter. I agree also, he's on borrowed time as far as earning more championships go. Hell even in my perfect world, I can only see him getting two more championships at best before he hangs it up. But that's my dream and not reality. I'd like to see him just take one more with the new 1000cc's and then call it a day. Retire to greener pastures, knowing that for a time in motorcycle racing history you conquered and dominated all, were the main force to be reckoned with and probably go down as the greatest of all time.

I think we'll have better racing with the 1000cc's, just depends on how much of the electronics are on them. If it's the same stuff found on the 800cc's, then I'm sure the new bikes will be more powerful like a 990cc but tamer like the 800cc's.

2006 wasn't a bad year, lots of ups and downs in that year. My favorite Rossi years were 2004, 2005 and 2008. 2004 probably being the best, because it was a new era for him. New team, new bike and new challenge. And Gibernau was still around, and to me those were some of the greatest battles ever between him and Rossi.

It's always been my opinion(and that's all it is, an opinion) that Gibernau was probably the only rider to really challenge Rossi and be able to keep up with him. I mean everyone were expecting Rossi and Pedrosa to have epic battles(nope, never happened really), same with Lorenzo and Stoner. The newbies were all forecast to challenge and be on the same level. But as before, if all of them were on equal performing bikes and equal tires, I dare say Rossi usually won the battles a majority of the time. With Gibernau, it was always down to the last lap and they scraped the entire time. I really enjoyed watching those two just check out from the rest of the field and fight til the end. Hated to see Gibernau go out the way he did, the guy was a hell of a rider.