In the press conference following the 2007 Catalunya MotoGP race, Valentino Rossi (then aboard a Yamaha), who had been defeated by Casey Stoner on his Ducati, told the media that Stoner had ridden “like a God”. It wouldn’t be the last time Rossi would openly marvel at Stoner’s riding skill in the years and races to come. Stoner would ultimately win 23 MotoGP races on a Ducati.
During this era, a talented young rider named Marco Melandri was hired away from Honda by Ducati to be Stoner’s teammate in 2008. A young Melandri, you may recall, had five MotoGP wins and 19 podiums to his credit by the age of 25 (younger than Ben Spies is today). His year on the Ducati virtually destroyed Marco Melandri’s confidence, leading to his ultimate exit from MotoGP.
With his seven wins aboard a Honda this year (so far), Stoner now has a total of 30 premier class victories to his credit. Stoner has a 44 point championship lead despite a DNF caused by Valentino Rossi, no less, and a stretch of “bad races” (each of which he podiumed) caused by a nagging injury. As MotoGP fans, we are blessed to watch many all-time greats on the track together today. Stoner’s skill set currently places him above all the rest.
Don’t forget Troy Bayliss also won one MotoGP race on a Ducati
Watching Stoner right now on a Honda feels almost like watching Jonah Lomu taking on defenders with the irreverent disregard for their size or ability, gliding over them like susceptibility does not apply with him; or maybe watching the ‘real’ Ronaldo (Brazil) at his peak; see world cup 1998 and 2002 taking on the world with irresolute resolve or maybe Achilles in Troy; and all that foe (see King Agamenmmon in Troy) can do is marvel and say; “The man wants to die.!!!” Now that’s how good Casey Stoner is when he’s doing what he was born to do, ride a MOTOGP bike!!!!
I don’t know whether any of you noticed this before but has anyone taken the time to observe the way Casey Stoner balances on a bike. Such leveled balance and at such high speeds, one is tempted to think the guy wasn’t born here. The way he handles the bike, the way he races, the way he turns in is just a marvel to watch. Almost takes amazing by surprise. Somebody see Laguna Seca 2008 again; Stoner versus the doctor n see what I’m talking about. The doctor won that race but boy was Stoner admirable to watch through the TV. I don’t know but there’s something about the guy’s balancing on a bike that I can’t put my finger on; its just different, even the doctor in all his greatness does not marvel the way Stoner does at peak speeds. There’s something about Stoner when it comes to balancing that sets him apart; like he was born to be the best. That guy like someone mentioned; is amazing!!!
I remember Hayden’s first test on the Ducati. After the ride he said “whatever they are paying Casey to ride this thing, its not enough.” I’m pretty sure Rossi had a WTF moment when he first realized what he got himself into. Lets just give Stoner the props he is due because he has been able to do things on a bike that others have struggled with, no matter which version you are talking about. The guy is good. I personally hate that he is with the evil giant known as Repsol Honda now but when he sinks down under the paint and gets down to business, he is a pleasure to watch. Watching Spies come through the field after a bad start this past weekend was an even greater pleasure.
Anyone that thinks Stoner is a whiner is obviously not paying attention. Stoner asked Ducati to sort the bike out many times. But hey…he was winning races on it, so the bike can’t be bad right? So lets just put it down to Stoner’s mistakes…and leave the bike alone. Stoner is now smiling his way to his second world championship, with a team that’s obviously listening and trying to help.
Meantime…Ducati hire ‘God’, and ‘God’ now never smiles, and it turns out he’s a whiney lil bitch.
Work that one out.
MotoGP should help us all figure out who the best riders really is by going back to carbs instead of fuel injection! No more traction control control, just suspension setup and skill!
I know, it’s a pipe dream. They could still control ignition timing, and the bikes would be more dangerous (?) than they already are. We wouldn’t have the benefit of great new production bikes with well sorted fuel injection and now traction control, ABS, etc…
Maybe just let the Best of the Best have ONE Spec race at the end of the season. Put them all out there on identical bikes. Make them ride an R1 chassis with a GSXR motor so nobody has any advantage over what to expect. Just let them duke it out and may the best rider win!
I’d buy that for a dollar!
Someone has a man crush on Stoner…
The first championship he won, he won on the best bike on the grid, the Ducati had the biggest speed edge I’ve seen (over other bikes) in all the years I’ve watched MotoGP. Others would catch him in corners, and he would build a 50 yard lead on the straights. I have trouble with the characterization that all of his Ducati wins were on an unridable bike. Many of those came on a great Ducati his championship year. I recall a few wins on the unridable version of the Ducati, and that was definitely impressive.
Now he’s clearly riding the best brand of bike going this season. Hondas ar dominating the podium, and he’s far and away the best Honda rider.
I’ll give you that Stoner is a top 3 rider, and perhaps the best rider, but my personal vote would go to Lorenzo. The Yamaha was not the fastest bike last year, yet he ran away with the title. I predicted last winter that Stoner would win the championship this year. The Honda was far and away the fastest bike on the grid the second half of last year. When you put a top 2 or 3 rider on a vastly superior bike, good things are going to happen.
Tim…Do they have TV where your from? Is Lorenzo on a Honda? Where are both stoners teammates? As for him wining on “the best bike on the grid” in 07…again where where his teamates? You should buy a TV, and then update to google….The sooner CS makes Moto GP boring like Mick Doohan did the sooner you will have to swallow your pride….
My God!!
30+ comments about Stoner and not one line about his lovely wife?!
You people are idiots!!
P.S
Is it just me or are captchas getting more unreadable by the day?!
damn straight Gutterslob;
His wife…very nice indeed
Thost damn captchas…i have to reload it a few times before I can even come close to figuring it out.
actually Dirck, its widely accepted that the 2007 Ducati GP7 was clearly the best bike and caught the other manufactures off guard.
Yea….which is why his team mates also finished so far ahead of everyone…ohhhhh wait…they finished somewhere behind every satellite team….YOUR MISTAKE!!!!
Stoner’s a whiney little dbag.
All he did last weekend was complain about how miserable the repaved surface was at Indy, and then went out and destroyed the field on that supposedly horrible course.
Go home and don’t come back until you learn some manners.
If he were wrong, I’d agree with you. Not the first person to criticize that surface. Just the most publicized.
Waaaaaa! How dare Stoner criticize your beloved track! Think we’ve found the REAL dbag.
You should get over it, and enjoy the talent you’re lucky enough to witness.
ha…punkass
Get off Stoner’s nutz, dbags. He’s no Lawson, Rainey or Schwantz. Just a dbag with more horsepower…
i’m not on his nuts, if i were he’d talk alot higher than he already does. Just saying, he rides well, not all the time, but more so than others.
He sure ain’t no Rainey or Schwantz, as he’s already won more GP’s than both of them! Lawson’s tally very shortly.
Great scott! how can this even be? all these comments on what..a carbon-trellis-smurf-gurf-turf frame.
Bottom line is, Stoner is the man. I don’t particularly like him, but there is no denying his skill, independently or when compared to the current field.
Ducati appears to be a mess, it would be nice for them to figure it out so there could be more competitive racing up front.
Who knows, maybe Kawasaki will come back and kick all their arses….
It’s interesting to look at year by year results for the Ducati riders from 2007 to 2010 when Stoner was on one.
2007 Stoner got 10 1st, Caparossi on the other factory ducati got 1 x 1st, 2 x 2nds 1 x 3rd. Barros got a 3rd
2008 Stoner got 6 1sts 3 x 2nds 2 x 3rd
Toni Elias 1 x 2nd 1 x 3rd
2009 Stoner 4 x 1st 1 x 2nd 3 x 3rd
Hayden 1 x 3rd
2010 Stoner 3 x 1st 2 x 2nd 4 x 3rd
So in Stoner’s worst year 2010, he did better than all the other Ducati riders together over the 4 years. I’m not worried about who had what frame I’m just saying you can only race what they give you against whoever is in the field and in those 4 years no one else on a Ducati was anywhere near Stoner
I thought that Stoner was good on the Ducati even in 2010, but this years effort on the Honda is showing his class. Stoners rides last year on the Ducati showed he was ill prepared to put up with a half assed effort from Ducati. Thank god he did not get hurt falling so much. He won where he could and crashed going as hard as he could to win almost everywhere else, that is the mark of an extremely committed rider.
You do have to wonder though at what point Casey just gave up telling Ducati it was all wrong in 2010. I see now that Ducati and Rossi are asking Bridgestone to make soft construction tyres for 2012. Probably to give the super stiff pogo spring Carbo-Chassis Ducati more feel. You have to wonder if the other teams will like that. Giving Stoner, Lorenzo and Spies etc more room to move in saving the front might encourage them to go faster again!
I seem to remember a certain top shelf rider, who shall remain nameless, got in a pissing match with a top ranked motorcycle manufacturer, his employer at the time and no names please, over one simple question; Is it the rider or the machine that is the most important? If the rider matters more, as this certain top shelf rider claimed, wouldn’t he be further up the championship standings? In fact, would it really matter which factory bike he rides?
I wonder what happened at Ducati to make them appear so inept this year. Their current superbike is so bad that the points leader is riding a model several years old. And it appears the only one capable of winning on their MotoGP bike is Stoner. Now that he has a competitive bike, Casey is clearly in a class of his own. All of which sure makes Ducati look bad.
Umm, Checa is riding the current Ducati Superbike, the 1098 R. It is not ‘several years old’, the parts are a combination of last year’s and this year’s. The bike it’s based on hasn’t been updated in a few years, but the bike Checa rides features all the latest technology, plus direct Factory support from Ducati.
don’t get it… why Valentino and Nicky can’t get more out of the Ducati?
Especially when Nicky was teammate with Stoner!
re: “don’t get it… why Valentino and Nicky can’t get more out of the Ducati?”
using just nicky as the proverbial “canary in the coal mine”, it does appear the GP11, at season’s start, was altered significantly enough away from the GP10 that it has “devolved” into a steaming pile. there was no rossi input yet, so not sure what they based the changes on…? since they certainly weren’t receptive to feedback from stoner…? hayden’s gone slower on it on several occasions now than what he did on the prior chassis. add to that the rossi updates, and we now seem to be “polishing a turd”. increasing the displacement isn’t going to cure what ails that bike. if anything, it’s going to EXACERBATE the flaws as vale and nicky push more and more.
re: “hayden’s gone slower on it on several occasions now than what he did on the prior chassis.”
Has Hayden gone slower compared to his own times on the same track with the prior chassis or has the field just improved that much more than Ducati, making them look slower than last year?
The headline is misleading at best. Irresponsible at worst.
16 of those 23 wins were on the trellis-frame precursor to the carbon bike. 10 wins on the GP7, 6 on the GP8. While he is the only person to win a race on the carbon frame, he only won 7 races in two years on the ‘unrideable’ bike. I’m not discounting the guy’s ability. Only your reporting.
Implying that he won 23 races on the ‘unrideable’ bike is totally inaccurate.
+1. The guy is very talented but so is Valentino, the M1 caused over 50 crashes to the 4 riders (Barros,Checa,Melandri,Abe) in the previous year, people forget what Valentino did winning the 1st race sliding all the race against various perfect RCVs. Last year remember also Hayden performances were close or even better than Stoner, so the bike is even worse at this momment.
what ar you smoking.. hayden’s performance has been better than stoner.. he is closer to rossi on the ducati that he was to stoner (i am sure I didn’t check facts but that woud be true)..
(darth vader voice) “impressive… most impressive” (/darth vader voice)
2 words… PYRRHIC VICTORY. to further “frame” (pun intended) rue’s point in it’s proper perspective, while 23 wins is certainly alot, the motorsports point system is unique in it’s demonstration that one can certainly win many battles…? yet STILL lose the war. it’s not like cheerleading at a football game. for 3 of the past 4 years in which those wins came, it was others who ultimately walked away with the crown. who those “others” are/were is irrevelant, the point being wins are not necessarily a championship make. nicky knows a lil’ something about this. armed with advanced kit, this should be the year casey “converts” those wins into a title.
PS: i meant say rue’s EXCELLENT point…
Your post about the headline has merit. Even 1 win (let alone 7 wins) on the cf frame bike is still impressive considering the 2011 Ducati riders’ results.
I fully agree. I think Stoner has talent, but with the carbon frame giving EVERYONE headaches, we’re not comparing apples to apples. We’re sort of comparing rotten apples to bananas… It’s interesting to see Hayden doing much better on the GP11 bike than Rossi was doing on the GP11.1 frame in the races where there was overlap. It’s tough to say who is even on what frame on what race; I’ve heard conflicting reports across the board. One thing is clear – Ducati is moving backwards with development and 2012 is going to be very tough for them based on current trajectories.
The bike Stoner had so many victories on is a far cry from what they’re running now, that’s the bottom line. Poor choice of article title.
disagree.. the article is spot on.. the even though the bike was trellis framed – it was unrideable for Melandri who was on fire at the time. carbon frame, trellis frame, different firing order, weight distribution, vague front end or bad handling – Stoner is the only one to have ridden it to victory. Jeremy Burgess said in interview that stoner rode the bike at the limit with lot less room for error than rossi was willing to do so.
He may not be most like-able (mystery illness, media comments etc) but there is no denying the talent is big time. He and Jorge are the top dogs.. Rossi is the greatest of all time but there will be no more championships – no one is beating stoner or lorenzo in the next few years.. may be pedrobot if he stop injuring himself
You need to read the article more carefully. The whole discussion about Melandri relates to the trellis-framed Ducati. Melandri rode for Ducati in 2008, before the carbon frame was used. Even the old frame was “unrideable” for anyone but Stoner (leaving aside a win by Troy Bayliss).
I’m sorry, but when you have to say ‘read the article more carefully’, it’s the article’s fault and not reader comprehension.
The fact is, when someone says “the unrideable Ducati”, anyone who’s been paying attention thinks of the carbon-framed bike and not the one he won a world title on.
Melandri does not equal Stoner, Rossi, Bayliss or Hayden. Good rider. But not in the same league.
He said YOU need to read the article more carefully, not everyone. And he didn’t need to say it, your comment required his response.
Have you tried Yoga?
Davis – Acceptance by anyone of my opinion is neither needed nor desired.
I’ve said my piece. Like it, lump it or assume I’m over-reacting.
Likewise.
I think the title and article were not the least bit mis-leading or irresponsible (you’re taking this stuff way to seriously). Very good read as usual.
If I’m not mistaken, Stoner is the only rider to win on the 800cc Duc regardless of frame material.
No doubt. The wording was quite strong. In much the same way Dirck’s headline was designed to grab attention.
Not the “least bit” ? Your yoga instructor would encourage you to see otherwise as there is enough in that headline to prompt further reading, especially by those that have been following GP over the last 3 years.
I would love to see Rossi and Stoner both on identical Honda’s go head to head for a couple of laps. Then Ducati could tell exactly if they needed to spend money on a new frame or a new rider!
Hoo-Doggie!
re: “I would love to see Rossi and Stoner both on identical Honda’s go head to head for a couple of laps.”
i’ll go ya one better. i’d like to see rossi, stoner, lorenzo, and spies all on identical GP11’s…! now THERE’S a test of skill. LOL
that would be a easy result to predict… stoner (not that he is the best or better than the greatest of all time Rossi – just that he is better at riding modern electronic laden bikes and has proven to be the most adaptable of any and more willig the ride the bike on the edge – Jeremy Burgess’s view who knows something), Rossi as he will fight the most, Lorenzo – may even be faster than rossi and Spies will be behind all of them (still improving)
Stones
So true… Stoner is amazing