Troys first MotoGP year was also Ducatis first year. He scored 2 or 3 podiums from memory.
To put that in perspective Dovi scored 1 podium in this, his first year in MotoGP on a bike that had already had a years development & settings information behind it ( plus was the product of a racing department with many years experience in MotoGP). The man who beat Bayliss to the '07 WSBK title has made an impact in MotoGP more with his piano playing than results.
Ducatis inexperience (in MotoGP) resulted in the following years bike being a bit of a dog, Troys results took a dive.... but were still light years better than Marco's efforts this year.
I may well be a bit one eyed... but if Troy was on the '06 bike rather than Gibbers then I think he would have won the title, not Hayden. Its interesting that Troy took Tardozzi & his superbike team to crew the 2006 race, that leads me to think that there was a power struggle within Ducati regarding keeping or dumping Troy at the end of his second season- and the nay sayers won.
Since Troy returned to WSBK he has won 2 titles, and outperformed all the MotoGP refugees that have turned up in WSBK.. Barros Biaggi, Checa. So we never saw the best of Troy in MotoGP. A shame really. Was Bayliss good enough to beat Rossi day in, day out? Dunno ... and I don't care really. The struggle would have been interesting though
As it stands Ducati won the last of the 990 GP races with the oldest first time GP winner in history & won the first 800 race with the youngest... and they are both Aussies.
Posted: 06/11/2008 at 22:56
