The Most Talented
It is no secret that many among riders, insiders, and enthusiasts consider Casey Stoner the most talented rider ever to enter MotoGP, even superior to Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez in motorcycle riding skills. However, it is always striking to hear the story from those who worked firsthand with the Australian, sharing the garage with him, talking to us, and being able to analyze his data meter by meter. In the latest episode of the podcast Mig Babol, hosted by former rider Andrea Migno, Ducati’s historic test rider Michele Pirro recounted his experience with the two-time MotoGP world champion. Pirro and Stoner indeed crossed paths at Ducati between 2016 and 2018, when #27 returned to Borgo Panigale to work as a test rider himself, alongside Pirro.
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“When I arrived at Ducati everyone, from the technicians to others working on the project, kept repeating: only Stoner rides this bike, only Stoner wins with this bike. This mentality also existed within the company,” Pirro said. Stoner’s great peculiarity was his riding style, which really could not be replicated by any other rider who had the same bike at their disposal: “When Stoner came back as a test rider I thought ‘perfect’ – Pirro explained – because I finally hoped to be able to race again. I wanted to be a rider. Actually, he had also returned to prove his talent. He was not particularly interested in being a test rider with a broader perspective. He mainly worked for himself and the bike he had tuned with his maps could practically only be ridden by him.”
A Playstation Rider
In 2017 and 2018, Ducati had riders of the caliber of Jorge Lorenzo and Andrea Dovizioso on the team, but even for them it was impossible to use Stoner’s bike: “Lorenzo also tried those solutions and immediately went back. I only did one lap.” The Australian’s style was literally like a video game: “He didn’t want electronic controls. He did the traction control himself with the rear brake and didn’t even want an anti-wheelie system,” Pirro recalled, “when I talked with Lorenzo or Dovizioso I saw myself in the things they said. Talking with Stoner was like he was telling you that this helmet is black instead of blue. When he told you about the lap, the way he did it, you thought it was something you had seen on PlayStation. Then you looked at the data and realized he really did it that way. And he did it with incredible naturalness. It’s not that Lorenzo or I didn’t try to imitate him, but for us it was unnatural. To take turn 3 or 11 at Sepang the way he told you you said to yourself ‘I’m going to kill myself’.”
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Finally, Pirro also revealed a funny anecdote regarding the Sepang tests and the way Stoner pushed the Michelin tires excessively to the limit, which in the meantime had replaced Bridgestone on the grid: “With Bridgestone, which had a very hard rear carcass, he managed to load the weight on the rear. When the first Michelins arrived, he managed to overheat one on the warm-up lap. He entered the track with very few electronic controls and therefore made the tire slip a lot. Probably not even the Michelin engineers were prepared for something like that,” he concluded.
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