Why Casey Stoner's Return To MotoGP Is Actually A Really Big Deal

Two-time MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner was regarded as one of the most naturally gifted motorcycle racers of his generation. Stoner had the raw ability to ride any motorcycle on the ragged edge lap after lap. His talent was astounding, stamping his authority on MotoGP as soon as he entered the championship in 2006, taking pole at his second ever GP event. The rest of the 2006 season was unfortunately beset with numerous crashes, but Casey quickly shrugged them off, and in 2007 he took the unruly Ducati Desmosedici GP7 by the scruff of the neck and dominated the championship, winning the MotoGP title on only his second attempt.

Over the next few years Stoner was always fighting at the sharp end of the pack, and in 2011 he won his second and final MotoGP championship with his new team Honda. But that wasn’t enough to stop the young Australian from falling out of love with the sport. After 11 years of racing in GPs, Casey felt that the series was becoming increasingly dominated by politics and constant rule changes. At the 2012 Le Mans MotoGP press conference, Stoner officially announced his retirement to a gobsmacked room of journalists. Never had anyone looked more ready to leave their sport, but the decision to retire at 26 years old was still incomprehensible to many. HRC boss Shuhei Nakamoto even offered Casey an eye-watering £500,000 per race to stay, which would have made him Honda’s highest-paid sports star at the time. Amazingly Casey refused, claiming that money didn’t interest him and that he’d prefer to spend time with his family, hunting and shooting in the Australian outback.

After his retirement from the sport in 2012, Casey acted as a temporary test rider for Honda. He still enjoyed the development side of racing so it was a perfect partnership. Rumours of a return hung in the air, but Casey flatly denied any possibility of a comeback. That was all to change when Honda factory rider Dani Pedrosa was sidelined with an arm injury in 2015. To everyone’s surprise Stoner actively pushed to be his replacement rider for the American, Argentinian and Spanish rounds. A done deal, right? Wrong. In another surprise twist, Honda refused his services, instead giving the ride to Hiroshi Aoyama. Casey publicly expressed that this refusal was down to Honda’s top rider, Marc Márquez feeling threatened by him. This alleged disagreement ultimately led to Casey bringing his Honda contract to an abrupt end.

Which brings us to November 2015, when it was confirmed that the Australian racer would be returning to MotoGP with Ducati as a brand ambassador and test rider. Rather predictably, the press release was full of qualifying statements which claimed Stoner wouldn’t be returning to ‘race regularly’, and that his role would be limited to a selected number of MotoGP tests. But in a recent interview with Motorcycle News (MCN), Casey stated:

“Ducati want me to do wildcards and I’ve got options whenever I want, but at this point we have made no decision. I’ll see how the tests go and hopefully I can get some test time on a grippy track that’s race-ready.”

That sounds like he’s not ruling out the possibility of a racing return. And riding at the official tests also means that he’ll be on the track at the same time as the other riders, allowing him to accurately compare his pace against his competitors at regular periods throughout the season. For that reason, we’re almost certain that he’ll be racing in 2016.

So why should this excite you? Here are four reasons…

1.Ducati and Stoner reunited

We mentioned earlier that Casey won the 2007 MotoGP championship on the Ducati Desmosedici GP7. What makes this feat even more impressive is that no other rider managed to tame the beast from Bologna like Stoner. The Desmosedici demanded a specific riding style which allowed the bike to move about on corner entry and exit. Plagued with horrendous understeer and an aggressive power delivery, the Ducati was a complete handful. If you tried to ride it smoothly like a Yamaha, you fell off. If you tried to ride it hard like a Honda, you also fell off. It actively wrecked the career of Marco Melandri, who simply couldn’t get his head around the bike. Ducati even sent him to counselling after he finished seventeenth in the 2008 championship - teammate stoner was an impressive second.

Only when the ‘greatest of all time’ Valentino Rossi failed to win a race on the bike in 2011 and 2012, did Ducati fully realise the extent of its problems. If Casey can come back and win on the troublesome Ducati, he’ll go down as a legend of Grand Prix motorcycle racing.

2. 'The Aliens' sharing the same track

When Stoner left the sport in 2012 we were denied the opportunity to see all five ‘aliens’ race each other on the same racetrack (the name alien is given to any rider who is consistently in the mix at the front of the MotoGP championship.) Before Stoner left, the Australian was arguably the fastest rider in the world over one lap. That title now belongs to Marc Márquez.

The 22-year-old Spaniard is something of a phenomenon. In 2013 he managed to win the MotoGP championship on his very first attempt, the first rider to do so since ‘King’ Kenny Roberts won as a rookie in 1978. But what has made Márquez a real fans’ favourite is his loose and overly aggressive riding style. He has the unique ability to steer the bike on the brakes with the rear wheel inches off the ground, and he also uses an unconventional elbow down style to carry ridiculous corner speed. After years of watching riders use a ‘wheels-in line’ riding style, Márquez was a revelation to watch.

Technology and riding styles have moved on a long way since 2012. As a result Stoner will be determined to show that he still has the pace to mix it with the fast boys. It will also be phenomenal to watch four world champions (excluding Pedrosa) fight for dominance on factory bikes. Let the battle commence.

3. More on-track battles

The 2015 MotoGP season was absolutely incredible for all the wrong reasons. After a long season of hard and fast racing, the championship eventually came down to two riders: Italian Valentino Rossi, and Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo. Only those two riders could win on points; Márquez had scuppered his chances earlier in the season by falling off a few too many times.

Now in most cases, when a rider has no statistical chance of winning the overall championship, they try and stay out of the way of the main title race. But it appears that Márquez didn’t get the memo. Instead, he kept getting caught up in the battle between Rossi and Lorenzo, with the latter benefitting from the constant disruption.

Cue Rossi accusing Márquez of conspiring with his fellow countryman to ruin his title chances. This boiled over at the penultimate race of the season, the Malaysian GP, when Márquez once again got involved in Rossi’s race. For the first time in his career, Rossi completely lost the plot, rilled by the Spaniard’s actions, and kicked Márquez off his bike. This action led to the Italian being given a back-of-the-grid penalty for the last race of the year, ultimately costing Rossi his tenth world title.

However, the Italian’s spat with Márquez isn’t the first disagreement he’s had with other riders. Max Biaggi, Sete Gibernau and a certain Casey Stoner have all felt the wrath of Rossi at one point or another. In fact, Rossi and Stoner’s on-track battle at Laguna Seca goes down in history as one of the sports’ hardest and most ruthless races.

With all this tension on track it looks like 2016 is going to be another action-packed year. Everyone has a point to prove and no rider will want to back down. Let’s just hope it doesn’t all end in disaster…

4. He never reached his peak

Stoner ultimately retired because he’d had enough of the politics that came with racing. He was also badly injured at the 2012 Indianapolis Grand Prix, something that would eat away at any racer’s motivation. But he never fell out of love with racing. After retiring, he tried his hand at V8 Supercars, but after finishing 18th in the standings in 2013 he quickly realised that cars were not for him.

His return to the Suzuka 8 Hours last year, and now his return to MotoGP in a testing role, shows that Casey has unfinished business on two wheels. I mean, he won for the sixth successive time at the challenging Phillip Island in his last MotoGP season. He certainly wasn’t slowing down. When he makes his return to track today at the official Sepang MotoGP test, he will still only be 30 years old; Rossi is battling for championships at 36.

Will Stoner make a full return to racing? Can he be the fastest rider in the world once again? We think so, and we can’t wait to find out!

Source: MCN