It’s always a tricky proposition to forecast the top-10 rankings in a racing series before the season starts. The biggest wildcard in pre-season prediction are injuries. The safe pick to win the championship this year was Josh Hayes. Over on the WERA BBS Hayes was the overwhelming pre-season pick. That turned out to be a good call.

My pick to win the championship was John Hopkins. In retrospect that was my heart predicting over my head. Hopper had come through so much I really wanted to see him do well. I knew John’s wrist was not 100 percent, but I had no idea it was a potentially career-ending injury. His strong finish to the season (three straight podiums) after coming back from surgery at least gave some justification for my pick.

Josh Hayes did this year what Josh Hayes has always done and that was win races, races consistently and win championships. He had to come from behind after a slow start at Daytona (where he burned up his clutch in the first Superbike round). From mid-season on Hayes was outstanding, winning seven out of 13 races starting with a sweep at Infineon Raceway. He didn’t even take over the series lead until mid-season, and that was for just a single race when Tommy Hayden took the top spot after winning his first American SuperBike race in Sunday’s Road America. Hayes got the lead back in Mid-Ohio and from then on it was a battle between him and Hayden for the championship.

So if you take out Hopkins, I had Hayes and Hayden next, so at least the order was correct. Blake Young and Aaron Yates both missed much of the season due to injury so scratch them from my list. I then had Chris Ulrich in sixth. He was right there much of the season, but he too was injured late in the year.

The one I really missed was Jake Zemke. I thought Zemke was on the downside of his career curve, but he made my prognostication skills look horrible when he blasted off to a sweep of Daytona and led the championship for the first half of the season. Unfortunately Zemke went backwards in the second half of the season, but he started so strong he was able to hold on to third in the championship. Ditto for Larry Pegram, who had a much more solid season, albeit inconsistent, than I predicted. Ben Bostrom was another veteran who showed renewed vigor at times in 2010.

All in all I’m not totally embarrassed by my predictions. In most cases I had the order correct minus the injured riders. If Hopkins comes back next season and he’s healthy, I still think he’ll be a title contender. He proved that with his late-season performances.