I love MotoGP, and was a massive rossi and stoner fan, but I am sick to death of the rossifanatics that bag Casey Stoner about his inability to develop bike and other excuses and feel the need to rant...
First of all, the factory develops the bike and the team and riders work on setup to get the best of it. Sure they point to problems during testing like this fork is better than that, but the core features like ducatis decision on carbon frame or using the engine as part of the frame is a factory decision. The idiot preziosi. Thats where rossi fans should be venting.
You can't blame casey for the state ducatis is in right now. For years ducati have been largely focusing on making a bike that the second rider can ride (ie Melandri, hayden and now rossi). They've been absolutely petrified for years that if casey leaves, they would be known only as the career killers. Entirely justified, GOAT gets on and looks a fool, who in future would want to ride one? Fact is Casey made the ducati look much better that it ever was... take a average result between casey and his teammates and ducati was actually the third, possibly fourth best bike.
Casey is the more technically minded in terms of setup, and actually diagnoses where the time is lost... Valentino has good sensitivity and can say whats happening (ie lack of feel, chatter etc), but so can casey. I would say in setup ability, casey is slightly ahead - one thing is he has never felt the need to hide behind a wall. All his teammates are able to look at his data.
People crap on about Valentino going from Honda to Yamaha and how he went to an inferior bike but developed it with his genius. WRONG!!! Yamaha pre-rossi was an occasional race winner and always had good handling, but was always down on top speed by about 3-5kms, not a lot. When Rossi joined, Yamaha installed the big-bang engine. More torque and easier to ride, effectively fixing pre-rossi yamaha's weakness... since then all other manufacturers have gone big-bang. Yamahas been best overall package for many years, until late 2010 when honda finally overtook yamaha with performance orientated pneumatic engines (2008- mid 2010, yamaha had pneumatic engine that was fuel efficient orientated).
Competition - Rossi has faced some weak competition to get his early titles... the current crop that caseys had to deal with are on a much higher level. You never see rossi toy with the competition like he used to. But still, hats off to rossi, you can only beat the competition at the time and he did. Casey is still superior since he has been around though (including 2006)
Riding ability - Rossi, like lorenzo, is a fast corner, classic 250 style racer. Needs good front end, and rides like the bike is on rails. Absolutely needs a good bike. Great on breaks, but cannot pull a gap so you will see final lap battles. Casey on other hand can pull a gap and destroy field. Doesnt mean he cant overtake, have a a look at lorenzo overtake at laguna 11.
I truly feel as an overall rider, casey is not just better than rossi, he is probably greatest ever. People thought 07 he had best bike, but that was bs. Loris said that the bike was poor handling, great power but narrow power band, making it hard to stay within it. Reason casey won title was due to his immense talent.
Casey deliberately developed his riding style for MotoGP during 250 days, which like dani pedrosa, is a early standup style. But dani style is inferior to casey, cos casey leans to the extreme (clearly evident on tv) while by is more upright, thus being on fat side of tyre and getting on power earlier. Rossi and Dovi both say they want to copy this but is difficult. Also, according to Dovi after seeing Stoners telemetry, Stoner is absolutely precise on throttle while almost never using TC. He can also rid
Posted: 07/12/2011 at 18:52
