Lorenzo Bonder
Wah wah.
Australian former MotoGP rider and two-time champion, Casey Stoner, has been heavily linked towards a return to his former team, Ducati, in a test rider role, where he won the only rider's title in the team's history back in 2007.
Paolo Ciabatti, Sporting Director for Ducati, said in an interview to Speedweek,
"Casey Stoner has a contract with Honda as test rider until the end of 2015. There is the possibility that he will be back with Ducati as a test rider, but we need to wait until the end of the year. Casey is a hero for Ducati; he won so many races and the world championship in 2007".
As per Ciabatti's quote, Stoner is currently contracted as a test rider for Team Repsol Honda, the outfit in which he won his second MotoGP crown, however the relationship between the parties has turned somewhat sour. Rumors of this rift begun around the Qatar GP, where the Aussie offered to replace Dani Pedrosa in the Austin and Argentinian GPs when the Spaniard had to go into surgery, only to see his request denied followed by news that Japanese rider Hiroshi Aoyama would replace Pedrosa.
Another reason for the rift between Stoner and Honda is that the team engineers supposedly ignored the feedback given by the Australian rider, especially when Stoner complained about the aggressiveness of the RC213V motor, which played a pivotal role in both Pedrosa's and Marc Marquez's season.
Davide Tardozzi, Ducati MotoGP Team Manager, said,
“Casey is very important for Ducati and all its supporters. After he had some issues with Honda, we started talking and it would be great to have him back as test rider. A return as a full time racer is excluded. It’s clear that he put the quality of his life on top of the list and in fact now he is fishing somewhere. But he represents a lot for Ducati.”
Would you like to see the Aussie back to Ducati, even for test riding? How beneficial could this possible return be for the Italian factory team? Let us know in the comment section below!
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