Hey everyone. Since my last column, we finished up the season. I think y'all know how it turned out.

Winning my second Superbike championship was big. I won the Superstock title and that was good, but the season wasn't going to be complete without winning the Superbike title.

The year was not exactly a picture-perfect year. I didn't win as many races as I'd like, and that's due to the fact that Mat really stepped up his game this year and rode the best I've ever seen him ride.

This year I hit the ground the most I ever crashed in a year, and that was just the fact that I was having to ride to my absolute limit every time I got on the bike. Mat and I pushed each other farther than we'd ever been before. There were so many times I was in the red zone riding ... it was unreal. Pretty much every race, every lap of every race. That's just how it was.

I'm going to do the MotoGP test in Malaysia, but I don't really know too much about it. I'm just going to go size it up, see what goes down, see if I go decent on it or get my butt kicked. I don't know, but I feel like I'm riding halfway decent right now. I'm at a good age to go try it. So I'll give it a shot and see what happens. They just want me to get my feet wet and ride around on it, and see how it goes. Hopefully it'll be pretty good.

Going to Laguna for the last race, with so many variables, and being younger than Mat and trying to end all the pressure, it was a pretty awesome weekend for us. In the race we dropped back a little bit. I really had to put it all together and come back in the middle of the race, and then make the pass and go for the win. To be able to take it to the last race and win it like that made it really worthwhile, that's for sure.

For what we're trying to get out of each other, the rivalry between Mat and I is the absolute perfect thing. Mat said his goal was to win races and put it on the line. He won more races than he'd won in a year and tied his record for consecutive wins. He rode hard, and I guess you could say that he got what he wanted, and we got what we wanted with the championship. Mat rode just unbelievable this year and made it a really tough year.

There were some times when I wished Mat and I could throw on some boxing gloves and duke it out, but in the end, he's the best competitor I've ever had. He brings every aspect to racing. I don't think I'll ever have to race anybody as mentally tough or as talented. Sometimes Mat does stuff on the bike, and I'm like, "Wow." Or he does lap times that I'm just, "Are you kidding me? Where am I going to find that?" Yet somehow it always pushes me to do it, and to try to bridge it as much as I can, or to bridge it and beat him. For somebody like him at my age, it's just going to make me a much better rider for the future.

My team worked their butts off this year. To win two titles is obviously very hard to do. Next year we get to focus on one class, which should make things a little less stressful, and a little bit easier to test through some things at the track. Hopefully next year we can come back and win another title.

I didn't really change my riding style this year. It was more that I had to learn to ride at a pace so high the whole race. That's hard to do. I just had to ride hard. Last year, wherever you qualified, we'd race about half a second off that. This year, we were just drilling it every lap. You couldn't worry about conserving tires this year. It was just all out. I just had to ride my ass off, completely, the whole race, and fight through little things during the race and try to come back after mistakes and crashes in practice. Having to ride hard is all there was to it.

The domination? I think it's just Mat and I pushing each other so freakin' hard, all the time. That's just what's making our bike better, in setup and trying to find every last tenth of it, because we're trying to beat each other. When everybody else is kind of brushing it off as our bike's just better and that's just it. It gets a little annoying.

It's tough when everybody says, "Oh, the Suzuki's such a great motorcycle." The Suzuki is a great motorcycle, but if you look at all the other Superbike series in the world, ours is the only Suzuki that completely dominates. I think it's the team and it's the riders. If you watch Mat and me in practice, the bike is always wobbling, shaking, backing in, sliding, doing something. And when you look at other bikes, they're not necessarily doing that all the time.

I don't know what it would take for everyone else to catch up to us. If you look at Mat and me when we test, we are out there all the time. Some people go out and ride five laps and they're done for 30 minutes. We just work. It's not just us, it's the team. It's the mechanics we have. Everybody's geared to win. I'm not saying everyone else isn't, but you can just tell that there's some extra motivation in our pits, that's for sure.

I can't believe Josh Hayes isn't getting a Superbike ride. Jamie Hacking and I were talking about it. Josh has now won two FX titles in a row, and in my opinion he rode the best he's ever ridden this year. He's in the 600 class with Jamie, and Roger Hayden, Martin Cardenas, and Chaz Davies, and all those talented riders. Week in and week out, Josh was running up front. He'd never done that in 600, won races consistently and been right at the top. Josh is a guy that's going to ride 100% every time he gets on a motorcycle.

I think that Josh is a guy that can fight for the podium on a Superbike. The couple of times I've seen him ride a Honda Superbike at some tests, he's been third, fourth, fifth quickest in half a day. It could make our series a whole lot better I think. Hopefully he'll get a break soon.

I'm going to do the MotoGP test in Malaysia, but I don't really know too much about it. I'm just going to go size it up, see what goes down, see if I go decent on it or get my butt kicked. I don't know, but I feel like I'm riding halfway decent right now. I'm at a good age to go try it. So I'll give it a shot and see what happens. They just want me to get my feet wet and ride around on it, and see how it goes. Hopefully it'll be pretty good.

If I get the opportunity to race MotoGP someday, I'm definitely ready to try it. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity. I think I can do halfway decent on it. To me, it's just a motorcycle an it's just other riders. I'm not cocky, by any means, but I'm confident, and I feel like I can ride a motorcycle halfway decent. If I feel comfortable on any bike I'm on, I feel that I can hopefully ride it to the limit, whatever that is. If it's winning races or just finishing 10th, that's what it's going to be. I just want a chance on it to see if I can do it. It's different over there, that's for sure. But they're humans, and they're just motorcycles with round tires on them.

But next year, I'm going for my third Superbike title in a row here in the US. Right now I'm going to take a little time off, enjoy it a little bit. I'll be coming back next year strong, that's for sure.