Casey Stoner He entered the 2008 MotoGP season as the champion. Ducati’s first championship in just its second year in the class.
Mid to 2008 Stoner He fought hard to keep the crown. A run of three consecutive victories put him in third place after the German GP, just 20 points behind Valentino Rossi.
But Yamaha rider Rossi dominated the championship. He took five wins in a row, and six of the next seven.
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At the same time, Stoner was out of the lead at Brno and Misano. This strengthened Rosi’s grip, and he eventually won the title with 93 points.
Casey Stoner In 2008, he won the Dutch TT with a ‘60%’ effort
While the final result was disappointing, Stoner still has fond memories from 2008, especially the 2008 season. Dutch GPHe called it ‘the easiest race’ of his career.
Stoner beat Honda rider Dani Pedrosa by just three percentage points in qualifying, but went on to win the race with a ‘60%’ effort. The final margin at the line was 11.3 seconds.
To make Stoner’s performance even more impressive, Ducati Teammate Marco Melandri finished the final stage in 16th place, less than a minute behind the checkered flag.
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The easiest competition I have seen in my life. 2008 I think. Motor sports magazine. “The slowest race. It’s too cruisy. I was literally at 60%.”
“I won 12-13 seconds without pushing a lap. ‘Wow, can we do that every weekend please?’ It was.
“You walk around the track, you look at the TV screens, you watch other people’s races. You have time. I did that in the races, even when I was at my own level – because I saw where they were getting or where I was pulling.
“It was such a pure feeling. To go that fast and pull those lap times effortlessly. To be able to do that is very, very rare. To be able to do that just once in your career is an amazing feeling.”
‘I was only pushed three times for the whole race,’ said Casey Stoner.
Stoner ‘never wanted’ to drive flat on Sunday, and can only remember doing so in those three 178 runs. He got more satisfaction from reaching the limits of his abilities.
Neil Hodgson says Stoner can meet that limit. Faster than any other driver, needing only a few laps on Friday.
“I really enjoyed doing well in practice and qualifying, as strange as that sounds,” the Australian said.
“I think there’s only been three times in my career when I’ve pushed him from lap one to the end and I guess I’m lucky I didn’t crash.
“Qualifying is when you have to take something out. And when I can sit on pole for more than a second… I mean, two tenths is already a gap, so when you can comfortably get more than a second – and you still haven’t got it all – when the next best rider is in P16 on the same bike, you kind of go, ‘Yeah.
“And not only because I rode well, but because I did my job everywhere and the engineers, the team, everyone did their job, we were buying everyone, then we did the race and we were riding 70%, we were disappearing from the front.”
Stoner likens himself to Marc Marquez.But the Spaniard has been known to be a risk-taker all weekend, even when he’s leading. Last year, he fell from P1 at both the Americas GP and the San Marino Sprint.
