Can anybody stop
Casey Stoner winning the 2007 MotoGP World Championship? At the moment it is looking unlikely. However a good starting point would be to win the 13th round of the Championship, the Cinzano Grand Prix di San Marino e dello Riviera of Rimini at Misano this coming weekend.
The 21 year-old Australian arrives with a massive 60-point championship lead and is on the hunt for his eighth win of the season on the Marlboro Ducati. He's won the last two grands prix with ease and will have plenty of support from the partisan Italian Ducati fans. His nearest rival
Valentino Rossi can guarantee the support with his home village around ten miles from the track, but the seven-times World Champion can guarantee little else.
Rossi simply has not got the tools for the job at the moment. His Michelin tyres can't match Stoner's
Bridgestone's and the Fiat Yamaha just hasn't the pace of the Ducati. A two-day test at Brno last week did little to improve the situation so it could be another frustrating race day for the Italian idol.
The last race in Brno was another good day on track for Bridgestone with
John Hopkins producing his best result in
MotoGP, a second place on the Rizla Suzuki. The Kawasaki-bound American shares fourth place in the Championship with his equally impressive team-mate
Chris Vermeulen.
The Suzuki pair trail Spaniard
Dani Pedrosa in third place by 44 points. The Repsol Honda rider is also beset by tyre problems and finished fourth in Brno, one place behind his team-mate American
Nicky Hayden. The World Champion has finished on the podium three times in the last four races and with team-mate Pedrosa, completed an encouraging two-day test at Brno but Honda still have a lot of catching up to do.
Marco Melandri looks likely to return to what he classes his home grand prix after missing Brno with a painful trapped nerve in his neck. German Alex Hofmann also hopes to race after making remarkable progress with the serious hand injury he sustained in Laguna Seca last month.
