John Hopkins

John Hopkins, known as Hopper, is an American former motorcycle road racer, born on 22 May 1983. He began on a minibike, won his first race in 1986 and moved to road racing full time in 1999, winning titles in AMA Supersport and Formula Xtreme. In the MotoGP World Championship he rode for WCM RedBull Yamaha in 2002 and then for the Suzuki factory team from 2003, where he was teammate to Kenny Roberts Jr. and often finished ahead of him. He was suspended for a race after a first-corner crash at Motegi in 2003. He appears in the 2003 documentary Faster. His family is British, which led interviewers to describe him as Anglo-American, and later in his career he raced in the British Superbike Championship on a Ducati 1199 Panigale for Moto Rapido Racing.