As I recall rossi put it down a few times in his first season in the premier class on a honda.
Stoner 's premier class record imo shows more that he will go for the win regardless of whether his bike is capable of it rather than that he is a chucker per se . As others have recently said his overall dnf rate in the 800 formula is similar to the other top riders. He made no significant riding error at all in 2007, when someone (I can't quite recall his name) said he "rode like a god". He made 1 riding error in 2009, at a time when all you guys said it would be meaningless if he won the race concerned, and when a tyre was not warmed in the pits. . Last year he won races on a bike your favourite rider understandably doesn't want to push within seconds of his (stoner's) pace, pretty clearly because he considers it to be unstable. I can see strategic sense in his win it or bin it approach in the second half of last year, he needed to demonstrate his pace to honda apart from anything else given that even the composition of this year's factory team was undecided. When he had his 2 dnfs in 2008 anything less than a win was fairly useless to him as well. Surely as a valentino fan you would not object to a rider going for the win rather than settling for a safe place in any case
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As kropotkin implies where valentino finishes this year depends almost entirely on ducati. If they can "fix"the bike, which it looks unlikely they can do quickly at this point in time, he will finish first or second. If it is fundamentally flawed he will finish 4th or 5th, but 1st or 2nd next year.
