MotoGP: John Hopkins says third in MotoGP is ‘realistic’ target

American John Hopkins believes he has a realistic chance of catching Honda rival Dani Pedrosa to snatch third place in the MotoGP world championship.

Two successive podium finishes in Brno and Misano has boosted John Hopkins’ hopes, particularly after the Spaniard’s disastrous second corner exit in Italy earlier this month.

John Hopkins is 28-points adrift of Dani Pedrosa with only five races remaining but he said he was confident that he could overhaul the Repsol Honda rider.

The Rizla Suzuki rider told MCN: “Right now I’m riding my butt off for Suzuki and I got good hopes of finishing third in the world championship.

“I think it’s realistic but of course Dani would have to make a couple of mistakes and I’d have to be on the podium every week. I know Dani is quite tough in a lot of the tracks we are going to as well. But I think it’s a realistic target.”

John Hopkins will depart for Kawasaki’s factory team at the end of the 2007 season and he currently has an intriguing fight on his hand to claim the bragging rights this year in Suzuki.

The 24-year is currently four points behind team-mate Chris Vermeulen after the Australian’s own good run saw him claim two second places behind dominant compatriot Casey Stoner in the last three races.

“Chris and I have a bit of healthy competition in the team battling for fourth. We are both trying to catch Dani to get into third, so we might push each other closer,” said Hopkins, who is hoping a new front fork set-up he tried at last week’s Misano test will bolster his hopes of another big points haul in Estoril this Sunday.

“We played around with the front and got something that worked great over the bumps in Misano.

“It improved it tremendously over the bumps and that will work well in Estoril because that can be very bumpy too. It was a new fork system. I don’t even know what was different.

“They just gave it to me and asked me to run some laps on it. There’s a new configuration inside the fork and it worked very well in Misano. I’d actually tried it at Brno but it was better in Misano. So I’ll start immediately with that in Portugal.

“It’s much more stable over the bumps. In Misano where you slide it into the corner with the rear and then bring it back there’s a lot of force on the front once the front tyre hooks up.

“With the set-up we had before we had some skipping but the new stuff eliminated that. I could really run it into the corners a bit harder and it should be good for Estoril,” said John Hopkins, who admitted it was getting increasingly harder to find any weakness in the Casey Stoner, Ducati and Bridgestone package.

He added: “He is riding extremely well and he’s got a good package but I’m looking forward to Estoril. It’s a track I enjoy and very narrow and I think it will suit this year’s Suzuki.

“I go well around there and with some late braking we might be able to do something against him.”