If it was December of 2007, and you told John Hopkins that you wanted to talk to him about his grim future you would have forgiven him for laughing. At that point in time Hopper was celebrating his most successful season in MotoGP since arriving in the paddock in 2002. The 2007 season saw him riding his Suzuki to four podium finishes and fourth place in the championship.The success of that season was the culmination of five years of struggling to make the Suzuki competitive in the four stroke era of MotoGP. Insiders saw it as the beginning of better times for a Suzuki team that hadn’t had much success since Kenny Roberts, Jr. won the 500cc title in 2000. Hopkins surprised them all by joining a Kawasaki team whose best rider had finished eleventh in the 2007 championship.
Hopkins topped off his rise in the top class by tying the knot with his longtime girlfriend, but things soon turned sour. Hopkins and the Kawasaki team had headed down to Australia for preseason testing in late January, and it all went wrong when he had a high-side crash in wet conditions at the Phillip Island circuit. The accident left him with a torn abductor muscle on the left side of his groin and in a lot of pain.
The injury limited his ability to test what was turning out to be a difficult ZX-RR machine. He managed to qualify and finish twelfth at the first race of the season in Qatar, but he was clearly racing in pain. He managed a seventh and a fifth at the next two races in Spain and Portugal, but those races would be highlights that prefaced a fourteenth, a tenth and three retirements in the next five races. The tenth place at the Catalan Gran Prix came with a fractured vertebrae. The result of a Friday practice high-side. All in a day’s work for the determined Hopper.
The ninth race of the season was at Assen, motorcycle racing’s Cathedral of Speed. Hopkins had grabbed his first MotoGP pole at Assen in 2006, but his difficult season on the Kawasaki continued with a high speed crash during qualifying. The accident left him with a broken ankle, a broken tibia bone in his left leg, compression injuries to his left knee and extensive lower limb injuries. Injuries that would require more than a few visits to Dr. Art Ting in Los Angeles and time to heal.
Hopkins missed Assen and the next two races at Germany and Laguna Seca. Remarkably he returned for the MotoGP round at Brno in the Czech Republic. He crashed twice during the race, but seemed to have come away unscathed until he came back to the track for testing on the day following the race. During the race he had had problems with his right side, but didn’t think much of it. As it turns out it he had separated one of his ribs. He recovered from the injury in time for the next race at Misano.
Hopkins would be able to finish out the last five races with a tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, three fourteenth places and no crashes. It would be normal for anyone to feel relieved that such a difficult season was finally over, but the end of the season was just the beginning of more problems for the Anglo-American. The problems were the result of a worldwide recession that left many motorcycle manufacturers questioning their racing expenditures. Hopkins had a contract to ride for Kawasaki in 2009, but after many starts and stops the Kawasaki effort was reduced to a one rider team on what would be known as the Hayate team. That rider would be Hopkins’ teammate Marco Melandri.
Left without a ride and no other options in MotoGP Hopkins was on the outside looking in. The one plus in his favor was his contract with Monster energy drink, and after missing the first two races of the World Superbike season he took the Monster sponsorship to the Stiggy Racing Team in time for the third WSBK round in Spain. Hopkins hadn’t had much time to test the team’s Honda CBR 1000RR prior to Valencia, but he managed to finish eleventh and twelfth in the two races.
With a solid effort and no crashes in his WSBK debut there was good reason to feel Hopkins would see steady progress on his new ride. Any optimism that Hopkins or his new team might have had was crushed when he high-sided four laps into opening practice at his old nemesis. Assen. The crash left Hopkins with a dislocated left hip, a cracked femur and the prospect of more sheet time.
Hopkins missed the next two rounds at Italy and South Africa, but was in the paddock as a guest for the U.S. round at Miller Motorsports Park. American Jake Zemke rode for the Stiggy Team at Italy and Miller, but Hopkins plans to make his return at Misano on June 21st.
Hopkins talked to RoadRacing World during his visit to Miller Motorsports Park:
http://roadracingworld.com/news/article/?article=36770
