I think the eye opener will be the difference in how Honda's with real engineering development perform under him in comparo to the sudo-HRC stuff that trickles back to AMA for Erion and Corona....
That's an aspect to this I hadn't thought of. See how a Honda rider does once he gets on a properly developed machine. It will be interesting to see how he does on the Stiggy machine.
I'm also glad another AMA rider is getting a shot on the world stage. It shows that as bad as the AMA/DMG thing is going the stigma isn't being placed on the riders.