HEISMAN
3675151384025119
I don't get it.
Let's say you have a a major shareholder for a company. Your CEO, that made you a fortune 500 company, hasn't been able to maintain market share and the company is steadily losing revenue for the past four years.
What do you do? I say we keep the CEO and let the ship sink. Is that what we're all suggesting?
Burgess was right; it's a business. Rossi is in the twilight of his career and is wanting to try something different. What Burgess has said, which I find funny no one has mentioned, is, "<span style="color:#000000;<span style="font-family:verdana;Valentino has always been up front, honest, and speaks what he wants and how he wants things.[/size]" Doesn't sound like someone whose character flaw is insincerity to me.
In theory, a company doesn't have a finite window of operation; a motorcycle racer does. Of course you don't let the ship sink, that's why, technically, this is a legitimate move. However, one must factor in Rossi's age and the trajectory of his career, which suggests to me that he's done and this is little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Jumkie
3675371384040607
Bluegreen & Garbin, did u notice a distinct lap time performance advantage reported when the RC1000V used the softer CRT 'general-purpose' built Bridgestone tire? Now, imagine a rider having exclusive compound feedback provided for his 'specific-use' in races. That was the performance advantage VR enjoyed for years. (Its the same relationship that used to make Ducati competitive, now a POS, such is the extraordinary effect of specific tires). He was absolutely NOT that good but rather absolutely given an exclusive advantage over his rivals! Imagine in tomorrow's race Lorenzo got an extra special choice of tire that Marc could not get. Lorenzo wins the race. Then people cheer on Lorenzo saying he was just the better rider on the day. This happened for years! And its mind boggling how many spectators/ experts never thought this was an unfair situation. ...., its even accepted today as no big deal. Watch here how people will rationalize this post. In a sport where we NOW understand tires have more to do with the lap time than any other part of the package; there is no doubt VR got undeniably better tires than his rival. I for one discount any of VR's titles won when he had access to SNS. I know im in the minority. Anybody who thinks it would be ok for Lorenzo to ride with superior tires to Marc tomorrow and potentially decide a title and accept it as legit is something I dont understand. (Btw, I know peeps will respond saying others couldnt make SNS work, to which I have replied, thats because the SNS was not designed with them in mind).
Rossi wasn't the only one with the Saturday Night Specials, and he wasn't the only one to make them work. (I forget what the reason was for Elias getting a set in Estoril 2006, but we all know how that ended. They were that good, but they weren't so exclusive as to account for the entirety of Rossi's success.) I see the height of Rossi's advantages in 2002 and 2003, because you know Honda wouldn't settle for anything less than the very best rubber Michelin made available. And that wouldn't change when Rossi left, which means that Nicky, Barros, Biaggi, and Pedrosa at the very minimum were getting the good stuff in those years - I'd be shocked if Gibs and later Melandri didn't get choice rubber, too. And my understanding is that there wasn't a single SNS-spec tire; I'm under the impression that Michelin had, at least, a Honda-spec SNS and a Yamaha-spec SNS, if not rider-specific offerings. I will say that it was awfully suspicious that Bridgestone's compound/construction changed once they acquiesced to Valentino's, putting it politely, lobbying for the Japanese rubber.
I look at the years Rossi won the lion's share of his titles - 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 - and frankly, I just don't see the depth of talent we're treated to today. I think history would suggest that neither Biaggi, Gibernau, nor Melandri had the mental toughness to mount a serious challenge, and by the time Nicky had become stable in the series - despite HRC's best efforts, cough, Evo, cough - the days of the big Superbikes were over and he was never a rider versatile enough to win on an 800.
For me, the saddest part of Rossi's career is that he was too late to be measured up against Doohan, Schwantz, and Rainey, and too early to match up against Lorenzo and Marquez for any length of time with all parties in their primes. Sure, there was Stoner, but at the very minimum, half of his career in the premier class was spent on/in machinery/teams incapable of winning a championship.
