[Ducati] stoner

[Peter Bonner]

G'day Phil,

The great thing we can always count on, is the Aussie circle the wagon
reflex, and Phil you are a charming master of that. But as much as we would
all like to think that suddenly better tires suddenly turns around an
attitude, in Stoner's own words, there is more to it than that. In the April
07 issue of Roadracing World, there is the statement that the "Italian squad
is hoping that the 21 year old can learn from Capirossi before the 33 yr old
moves into retirement" Then there is "But he is already a father figure to
Stoner" and Capirossi adds "I'm happy to have a young talent alongside me
because I can be like a father to him, teach him many things. He is an
incredible talent. Ducati did the right thing to put him next to me".   The
article then says "Stoner is similarly delighted that he has someone to show
him the way"  Stoner is quoted as saying "Last year I was in a one-man team
and I don't thinkit's good. Its better to have a teammate so you learn stuff
and I couldn't have a better teammate than Loris" .  Stoner continues "
Loris is the best type of teammate you can have, he always puts in the
effort and maybe I can learn a few of his secrets, like how he pulls out the
aggressiveness towards the ends of races. All I can do is learn and work
with him and get Ducati into a better position".

Well it sure seems like Stoner understands what a great opportunity he is
getting to learn what it is all about. Certainly at Jerez, he showed a lot
about saving that aggresiveness for the end of the race, when he waited a
long time before moving up and capturing 5th. One can only think that no
matter what equipment he had, he would have moved up earlier on, and then
crashed because things weren't quite right, rather than having learned
already how to save up some of that agression for the race end.

You might be right that Stoner won't learn anything, that it was just the
tyres, but I think I will agree more with what Stoner says! As he says " It
is a priviledge to ride with Ducati and Loris". I am sure glad he is too,
because he obviously is a talented young man who just needs some mentoring,
and Loris is just the guy.

Heck, I think Stoner could have learned a lot from a flying fast old geezer
like you Phil!

Regards,
Peter


>>Message: 12
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:57:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: phil hitchcock <beveltracker at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Ducati] stoner
To: ducati list <ducati at ducati.net>
Message-ID: <448085.49463.qm at web51904.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

i think the big thing with stoner improving this year
is the tires. pretty much all his crashes were front
end loses - the b/stones are supposed to be one of the
best fronts around.being on a full factory bike is
also a big help. that is why he went with ducati
instead of staying with honda. better to be # 2 in a
factory team than #1 in a satelite team. that way you
get to have all the top gear - the results are up to
the rider them.
 remember all the years he diced with & beat the
midget from spain who always had factory bikes &
tires. wonder who would have been world champ if casey
was on the same level of bike???
give ant west a full factory spec bike & see what
happens - remember him blitzing the field by minutes
in the rain in assen??? pure skill not the machine.
proud aussie rant over. roll on sunday night superbike races

phil hitchcock
www.roadandrace.com.au
roadrace at cci.net.au