Originally Posted by chunder
Let's take stock
Vale won on a 125 Aprilia, learned for a year, won a race and then won the title easily.
Best bike? maybe, he poached the best engineers even back then as his talent allowed him to.
250, he did the same, learned once then dominated.
Similar in 500, but really who was he up against. While Mick was racing there was no opposition. Max now and again, Luca now and again, and Schwantz after 93 was an injured spent force.
On the NSR he had to beat Max, thats it really. Tady still won races as did Alex and Barros/Loris, Vale was not dominant in winning as Mick was. But he was playing and enjoying the game.
then on to the RCV, utter domination, rivalled only by a man who had previously shown nothing in any class and found inner strength from his team mate dying, Sete.
Went to Yamaha, but only under the proviso that the bike was capable of winning from the first race. Read the biography, that was kept very much under wraps, that Yamaha was designed to be capable of winning from the off, it was tested with 4 different engine configurations for Lords sake, who else has even done that in a first test! He would have still signed for them, but he really did put huge pressure on Yamaha to make that bike better in 04, its all in the book.
OK, no one else did anything on it, but lets face it, Abe, Checa and a very young Melandri??
He dominated from then on again, until the 800's and Stoner/Lorenzo. these guys beat him fair and square in the end, made him move on.
He got on the Duke and was, for him, hopeless, no worse than Melandri, Sete or Bayliss but his reign has been tainted.
I now rank Stoner and Lorenzo as better, they have consistently been able to beat each other on the best bikes. I rank Stoner higher coz he won on a Duke, all he hasn't really done is dominate the smaller classes as Rossi did.
But in pure top class terms, you have to rate Stoner as the better rider, not man, not anything else, but rider. Rossi is moving because he can't fix the bike and doesn't want to, he is getting older and wants to win again.
Can he? Of course, but does anyone here think he can beat Jorge?
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