Continued

Q You've never publicly talked about how bad your 2008 AMA season was for you, how sick you were, fighting for the championship. At Mid-Ohio it was really bad--you couldn't leave the motor home, and you were bleeding from a place, ah, nobody wants to bleed from.

A Yeah, a lot of people didn't understand that. There was a lot of pretty funny comments that I laughed about. "Oh, just got an appendix taken out, and that's all" - still, it was less than a week prior to the race that that happened, and that was the least of my concerns. But after we set pole and everything, it was just kind of like, "Oh, he just had an appendix pulled out, everything's fine." That was the least of my worries.

We had ... we didn't know where - we thought we knew where it came from, and now that everything's fine, we're good, but I had a straight horrible bacterial infection going on, that I was trying to fight, and I was having ... every night I was breaking into 102-103 degree fevers. The bed would completely be soaked with sweat, waking up.

One of my best friends, Jamie (Hacking), he saw what I was going through that weekend. I came into the race seven pounds lighter than I'd been all year long, and when you drop that much weight, it's horrible on your immune system and your body. I was coming in from qualifying and I could not keep anything in me. I was just going to the bathroom like, honestly, 25 times a day. It was ridiculous. It was one of those points, too, you didn't want to talk about it, because you didn't know what the hell was going on. We soldiered through it and had a couple - I don't know, I think we might have finished second in both races. That was one of those things that the trash talking and all the stuff that goes on at that point, is pretty much, you're just laughing, because they think they know what they're talking about, but they have no clue. And actually, the people that knew about it were quite stupid for even saying anything.

But we fought through it, and that was ... it was tough. The first year, we had to race the last few races when my hand was messed up a little bit. And then when that happened last year, last year was way worse than riding with a broken hand. It was no fun. But everything got straightened out, but it wasn't just that race weekend, it was the week in the hospital before that, the two weeks after that. I was so bad, I just stayed at Jamie's house, and we didn't train, didn't do anything. I had to get over what was happening. It was pretty rough. I don't wish that on anybody.

Q Your prowess on racetracks you'd never seen before, on a bike that you hadn't spent that much time on, all of that is amazing. But you really acclimated well to the Pirellis in WSBK. Can you talk about that? Is there anything in your life that prepared you for using Pirelli tires?

A Yeah, I'd heard from people, when they rode Pirellis against Dunlops, about the good things, the bad things, and all this stuff. I just kind of looked at it like, "Hey, I'm on the same stuff as everybody else." That was it. I really didn't have a lot of problems with them. The way I do tend to ride, the characteristics of the Pirellis don't really help me, but it was just one of those things we had to learn to cope with, to learn to set the bike up for those tires at the end of races, because everything you want to do to suspension when tires go off, you don't really do those with Pirellis. You've got to go in a different way. Different - it took different things, but yeah. The tire likes to do certain things, it doesn't like to do other things, and we just tried to be good in what the highlight of the tire was, and that's what was kind of what we set out to do.

Q There's been a lot of talk since you won the championship, about the way that Ducati managed their run at the championship. Presumably there were no team orders. What are your thoughts now that the season is over?

A Well, you're talking about how Ducati approached it. The thing is, okay, if Fabrizio would've let Haga win at Imola, and wouldn't have won the last race, you can do all these different scenarios, but it's just hard, because of the way racing is. If you would've done a couple other things, Haga might've won the title, but if he (M.F.) wouldn't have taken me out on the third lap, I would've had 25 more points to add to my tally at the end of the season, so it's always kind of - you've got to look at it from each side of the story.

Also, I didn't get any help. Tom rode the best he could, and if he could've been there, he would've helped me, but I got no help from the same company I was with. There was nobody up there. With Byrne being up there in certain races, and Fabrizio there the whole year, it was there for (Ducati). When we had mechanicals and things like that, you can only do so much, and all that.

So I don't really know what to say about it. We did what we had to do, and we deserve the title for sure, after all the stuff we came through. It would've been - if Fabrizio would've definitely helped more, I think he helped Haga out enough with a couple times with me. That's just how it goes.

Haga rode great through that year, and it's not that he didn't deserve the title, but we did the job, and at the end of the year, we won it. I definitely think the deserving rider won it, and that's how you've got to look at it. If he would've won it, then he deserved it. But it's not like he was robbed from it by any means.

Q It was kind of an odd year for you, in that for the first time your teammate wasn't your biggest rival for the title as it had been in the US, and you actually had a pretty good relationship with Haga and Fabrizio. Did your relationship with them change, as the championship wound down into the dying throes?

A No. Me and Haga still, we're still trying to hook up, as we speak, to go out to dinner before I go back home. He was definitely on a little bit more edge that last weekend. We just didn't talk quite as much. There wasn't any evil stares, and I still messed with his kids Saturday night. I just enjoyed it more. There was a different enjoyment when I raced back home, because when I won the race, I was almost like in between mad and, that feeling like in-your-face win. Here, it was just like a more enjoyable, I mean, when you won the race, you know you deserved it, but it wasn't like you were riding out of anger sometimes. Just totally different.

Q James Toseland takes over your bike for next year. Your thoughts?

A I think James is definitely going to give it one hundred percent. I think it's going to be a little bit harder than it's been for him, or harder - there are some fast guys in there now. I think he's going to be good. I think he's going to be one of the main guys you've got to watch out for, but I don't - it's going to be hard to go in there and dominate, for sure. But we'll see.

Crutchlow's fast and Rea's going to be good. Rea's going to definitely make another step. So it's going to be interesting to see how everybody does next year. The odds-on favorite already is going to be Haga, and I'm definitely pulling for him. Even though you want to see a Yamaha win, for sure. There's about five guys that have a good shot at it.

Q Can you talk about how you had your own little nucleus of home in Europe, with House, and Woody, and your mom? You were in Europe, but you were really surrounded by friends. That had to help.

A Yeah, it did help. I'm not stupid, I know that kind of stuff does help. Yeah, between Tom, Woody, Jeff, my mom, and all the friends that have come to visit me, and then the people that I met around here, like Brent Copeland, he's the director of the Lampre team, and he's a South African that speaks, obviously, English and Italian, and it helped me cope a lot with living here.

I don't think, if I was by myself I couldn't have done it. Couldn't have lived here. It made it a lot easier, and a lot more normal. That's important. Consistency is something to be said, and not only just on the track, but just the way you live, and the people you surround yourself with, and things like that. That was a big, big help for me this year.

Q You hit the championship really hard.. Some American riders came over this year and gave it a shot, and they didn't have anything close to that kind of success. Your thoughts.

A Jamie (Hacking) had a really good ride at Miller, definitely the best ride that anybody's done. They were jumping on Pirellis, too, for the first time. Jamie, I know that bike he rode, compared to his American bike, was quite a bit different. I don't know. They had some differences they had to cope with, too. I think those guys are a lot better than what they showed when they were here.