Casey Stoner: 'I never got respect in MotoGP, it's only happening now'

Phillip Island, home of the Australian Grand Prix, is as unpredictable as it is spectacular. Spring winds and sudden storms have regularly turned the circuit into a battlefield of elements – races delayed, red-flagged, or even cancelled, with wildlife occasionally joining the chaos.

Amid this ever-shifting stage, one rider consistently rose above it all. Casey Stoner‘s six-year unbeaten run from 2007 to 2012 was built on sheer authority, mastery of MotoGP physics, and an uncanny ability to thrive under pressure.

The Australian turned 40 on the eve of the race a few days ago. He has now been retired two years longer than the 11 seasons he raced at world championship level. Stoner’s seven terms in the MotoGP class delivered two titles with two different brands (Ducati‘s first ever in 2007 and for HRC in 2011, before his withdrawal allowed Honda to fast-track Marc Márquez‘s path) and he didn’t drop out of the top four in the standings for six of those campaigns.

Stoner claimed 33% of his MotoGP starts, was on the podium 69 times from those 115 appearances and is fifth in the all-time list for pole positions. Among the slew of results, he bewitched opponents and fans with his sensitivity and natural feeling for the motorcycle that translated to unbeatable speed in double-quick time. “One of my proudest stats is that I won at every single track where I raced a MotoGP bike, and I think there are not many people who can say that,” he told Motor Sport without bluster. “Even if the track was only on the calendar for two years I still won on it. That showed my ability to adapt to all situations, all circuits, all grip levels. And, for me, showed that I was a little more well-rounded than people thought.”

Stoner’s ghost loitered around MotoGP for years in one of those ‘you don’t know what you had until it’s gone’ phenomena. True, after 2012 the series quickly hurried into Márquez hype-and-wonder, and MotoGP has rarely been more tribal and uglier when Valentino Rossi picked the Spaniard as Stoner’s successor in terms of being the next arch-rival who-cannot-be-toyed-with. But Stoner surfaced now and again at events, like Goodwood Festival of Speed and at GPs in representative roles for Ducati and for HRC and, to this day, is a fierce ambassador for safety and apparel leaders Alpinestars. A smash while testing for Honda in an attempt at the Suzuka 8-hour in 2015 effectively ended his days on a bike at speed. He then struggled further with his health.

“Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” he half-grimaced of a condition also known as ME. “My mind and body shut down, and I had no control. It was pure exhaustion 24 hours a day and it’s only been the last one/two years that I have been slowly building up my mind’s resilience again to be able to choose what I was thinking. Before then, I was very lost.”

In 2025 Stoner has eased his way back into the MotoGP spotlight with the same grace as he used to handle a throttle. A demo retro ride-out at the Austrian Grand Prix in the summer (where he gathered considerable media interest) was followed by a week in Italy as he willingly joined the ceremony for the MotoGP Hall of Fame before the San Marino Grand Prix in September. During the weekend and the following IRTA test day, Stoner roamed the pitlane and was giving advice to riders. He also found time to sit in the swanky HRC hospitality and talk about what happens to an athlete’s greatness in the aftermath.

Trying to tap into his former brilliance (and his appreciation of it) means peeling back the onion layers of a mentality. Fortunately, Stoner is great at dissection. He once said in a podcast interview, “I’m not a one-dimensional rider”, and this could easily be applied to his fortitude, as much as his methodology towards racing. “There is no such thing as perfection…but striving for it is as good as you’re gonna get,” he underlined at Misano. “Me personally, I was always looking to my negatives and where I was struggling the most compared to others.”

“It’s unobtainable perfection,” he continued. “Like golf, and that’s what makes it so attractive to so many people. It’s about going out on the range and working on things, and you might become good in one area while another area slips: it’s just part of life and the process. The way I worked on motorcycles, I didn’t necessarily slip anywhere by losing my good attributes, I suppose.”

Stoner quickly contrasts and compares. “A good example for me, especially these days, is that too many [MotoGP riders] are focusing far too much on braking points and if you are on the absolute limit every lap on the brakes then you are going to make a mistake. You are always looking or striving for that comfort under brakes because that’s where you think you can make time. You set the bike up for that and it becomes worse everywhere else. You’ve just lost all the positives the bike has in other places.

“I learnt my lesson massively in 2010 in Japan. It’s very much a hard-braking track and very back-and-forward in Motegi. In the first session the bike was wheelying everywhere, and it was hopping and moving and not stable at all on the brakes. We were fast in the first session but we struggled. So, we worked on the bike all weekend and got it better, better and better and it was so stable.

“It was almost doing what I wanted it to do out of the corners…but I was as slow as hell. We went backwards. The bike was better, we were slower. So, in morning warm-up before the race we went back to the exact same set-up as the first session, and I said I’d deal with the issues just because I knew we had speed from it. I went out and won the race, when I had no right to win.

“The positives of that set-up far outweighed what we had to run with,” he says. “It was far more tiring, a more difficult race…but we won. I learned a lot from that. Too many others search for that ‘feel’ and sometimes you have to go out there and make it happen. Even when it doesn’t feel right then as long as it works then that’s all that matters.”

Stoner did things his own way, he said things he wanted to say and he did things he wanted to do. The ultimate example of this was leaving a lucrative Honda contract and MotoGP altogether at 27 (two-thirds of the current grid are the same or older) due to disillusionment with the championship and the extra PR demands of the role. His uniqueness also comes through his riding. He explains the minutiae of technique very well, and his breakdown of the corner named after him at Phillip Island (where he would apply a dirtrack sensibility to the line and speed to gain an advantage that hardly anybody could replicate) is mesmerising.

But, for all his wider perspective, Stoner’s own humility blocks appreciation of the fact that he could steer a motorcycle unlike anyone else. A partial explanation of his success makes light of the skill and adaptation that it required. “I knew I couldn’t do things that my competitors could, I didn’t have the confidence,” he says, without a trace of irony.

“One year in particular we didn’t have the bike [we needed] so we went left-of-field. The set-up we ran? Nobody in their right mind would have enjoyed it but, bloody hell, did it work. I had to change the way I rode and the way I looked at circuits and the way we’d normally attack a circuit because the bike did different things in a different part of the corner and line. But it worked. We pulled something out of nothing and from a set-up that was very unique. Normally not something I’d like…but we had to get a result and we had to think outside the box. We started winning races again.”

The 2007 world championship was won thanks to 10 victories and a further four podiums. It was only his second MotoGP season and his first with Ducati. His lowest result was a sixth place. He was 21. By the time of his second title in just a two-year spell with Honda, and after some memorable tussles with Rossi (with whom his relationship now seems to be one of genuine mutual affection), Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa he was already cementing his name as a modern MotoGP icon. What did it feel like to know he was that good?

“While I was racing I never thought that,” he revealed. “I never had that arrogance of ‘I’m the best’. I had people like Jorge, Vale…[to beat]. Maybe in 2007 I got a little bit cocky when I was doing very well: it was my first time with success. Very young. But I quickly learned my lessons, which I am very grateful for. I then started viewing things a bit differently. I believe you have to take pride out of the equation. As soon as you have too much pride then you stop looking at yourself as the area that needs improving. You’ll look to the bike or another excuse, another reason.”

What were the lessons? “I’ve never been the guy to go and buy cars and that stuff,” he admitted. “I always felt guilty spending money. I’ve never rubbed it in people’s faces, and I don’t think I was cocky around friends or family or anything like that. It was more over-confidence around competitors…because we were doing well…more general overconfidence about what we could achieve…and not knowing how quickly things can turn.”

People struggled to understand Stoner. How someone so young but with a wizened ‘old school’ approach could upset the Rossi-marshalled establishment so quickly and in a matter of months after he’d been labelled a serial crasher while in the 250s. His tendency to air his thoughts won fans and critics. It’s a characteristic that hasn’t ebbed to this day although he does seem to be more pliant to the promotional faff around MotoGP now.

It was a side of the job that earned the tag “bullcrap” when he was racing. Casey’s passionate railing against the advanced technical state of MotoGP feels a little like a ‘man shakes fist at the sky’ syndrome; after all, name a sport that has firmly closed the door on progression? But it comes from a place of concern and elite insight. After all, very few have made a similar mark on the championship and against such opposition.

“I was always trying to get more out of myself and everything around me rather than going ‘it’s incredible what we’ve done’,” he explained. “I think it was only 8-10 years after retirement that I really felt I started to get the respect that I was hoping for. I never had it while racing. There were always rumours about why I was fast, this-and-that. I never tried to correct too many people because I did not want to let my competitors know that I was as thoughtful as I was or as ‘planning’ as I was.

“I wanted to leave them in the dark and make them think that I only knew one speed, which was flat-out. But if you actually go back and watch my races then…it was like poker. I never let them know what my plan was going to be at any point during a race. Sometimes it didn’t work! But considering I was close to winning double the amount of races as my competitors then I like to think I got it a little more right than they did. In my opinion, sometimes with a machine that was sub-par to what they had.”

For many MotoGP fans then (and since) the end of Stoner’s career was premature. It robbed the sport of two true titans going to battle: Stoner and Márquez, and he’s undoubtedly been reminded of this many times since. Stoner’s call was not caused by injury or decline but exasperation, and perhaps the price of his dedication as well as the amount of years on the road within a family environment that pushed him to the brink. He was able to bring that knowledge to his own status as a father to two young girls, together with his wife Adriana.

“I was brought up…very tough,” he hesitates. “I’ve found a middle ground because kids need a thumb. Often, they’ll have a hard day and will give up. That’s not the moment to give up, often it’s when you decide to keep going. If you allow kids to make all the decisions…then they won’t know where to go.

“I always wanted family. A life goal. Very fortunate to have met Adriana at a young age and to have the relationship that we do. It certainly wasn’t a reason why I retired,” he added. Stoner transitioned from MotoGP Don to Dad in another life chapter and while his daughters are only aware of his fame through YouTube or when they accompany him to events where everyone wants his photo, he didn’t count on being sidelined as a further role model.

“Probably my biggest regret [from retirement] was that I didn’t bring them around and show them the cultures and the world we travelled and that kind of stuff,” he says. “My kids did not grow up seeing what hard work, dedication and all these things that it takes to get to the top in MotoGP. Instead, they saw me for most of their lives sitting on a couch struggling with chronic fatigue being a lazy arse. It was hard for me to show them dedication to anything when I could not do it personally. That was the toughest time of being a dad.”

Stoner is slight, still in great trim and with the first wrinkles starting to crease a youthful face. His health is back on the mend, his financial position is secure thanks to some investments with his salary and bonuses, and he is now looking around for the next project – perhaps in MotoGP – to grab some of his replenishing energy. “I was just a vessel at one point; existing without much purpose so it’s been really nice to get things together and get the health back. I enjoy putting my mind to things and I’ve been able to slowly compartmentalise what I want to do a bit easier.

“It was never an obsession, what I did, I was just good at getting things done in a short amount of time. Then, I didn’t want to think any more about it. I don’t sit and stir. I never saw my whole career as an obsession about bikes. I’d be like I was on track: I’d go out do shorter stints than everyone, less laps than everyone, get more out of it – in my opinion – than everyone in far less time. I didn’t need to run ten laps to get a feel for a bike. I could do it in two. I suppose it was more efficient.”