An unconventional champion
Among the many interesting topics that emerged during the beautiful MotoGP legends dinner that brought together some of the greatest names in the history of two wheels at the same table for an evening – the event dates back to last September but the video of the chat was only recently published by official MotoGP channels – the sensational retirement of Casey Stoner at the end of the 2012 season also re-emerged, when the Australian was just 27 years old. The two-time world champion decided to hang up his helmet, causing a real shock to many fans and thus closing the era of the first Fantastic 4 (him, Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa). From the following year, his place would be taken by Marc Marquez.
Chatting specifically with Lorenzo, the now 40-year-old Stoner delved into the reason for his early retirement from racing highlighting all his uniqueness, also from a character point of view, compared to all the other riders of that era. All the reasoning of the former superstar of Ducati and Honda is in fact focused only on “**having fun racing**”, a fun that Stoner had however lost due to the continuous advancement of technology and especially electronics on motorcycles. Below we report the dialogue, line by line, between Stoner and Lorenzo, in which #27 confides in one of his fiercest rivals from those years.
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Lorenzo: “So, basically, you suffered more than you enjoyed yourself, in the last few years.”
Stoner: “No, it’s not like that. It’s just that… I like to enjoy riding, so I want to savor the sensations felt in controlling the bike.”
Lorenzo: “But then, were you perhaps afraid of getting hurt?”
Stoner: “No, never. I never had problems in that sense. No, no. I simply didn’t enjoy the bikes anymore.”
Lorenzo: “The bikes?”
Stoner: “I told myself: ‘I’m not here to become famous. I’m not here to become rich.’ I’m here only to enjoy what I do and I can’t do what I want. I didn’t have control anymore. I was like… ‘F**k, there’s electronics everywhere.’ And I said to myself: ‘Okay, I’m done’.
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