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Happy how he is…

It’s funny isn’t it, how people’s minds seem to change about something they perhaps weren’t that fond of – once it’s been taken away from them for quite a while. Yes, this is that bi-annual time where Casey Stoner gets back on a motorcycle after spending the rest of the time fishing, and makes the current MotoGP grid look, frankly, ridiculous.

It’s now coming as little surprise that Casey can rock up and set the fastest lap time on at least one of the days of an official test. And off the back of this, Ducati will surely begin to reap dividends.

After all, the chassis Marc Marquez is still using in 2017 on his RCV, is the last one Casey developed for Honda before they ignored his feedback and went on their own path instead at the start of the 2015 season.

The ensuing fallout, not helped by Honda initially blaming Stoner for crashing a Fireblade in the Suzuka 8-Hour (it was a stuck throttle), saw him leave Honda, disillusioned with the Japanese giant, and return to Ducati. He must gain satisfaction from the fact that the factory team still utilise his work on the 2014 chassis three years later!

Casey was at Sepang prior to the official test, however it was raining most of the time and he was only doing a few shake down laps on the development machine, rather than fast and flat out circulations.

His time of 1m59.681s on day one was only a couple of tenths off the fastest lap from all three days set by Maverick Vinales, an impressive 1m59.368s effort. Considering the guy has barely sat on a bike for months, and not raced anything competitive for years (bar Suzuka in 2015), this just highlights what a mercurial talent he is. And it is this talent that drives people crazy, even those who would previously berate him for whatever reasons they found fit.

That’s because they, and we, want to see that talent put up against Marquez et al. There’s no doubt whatsoever that should he ever decide to return to racing, he would be competitive and right up there fairly quickly. These public tests, where he reminds us just how phenomenal he is, simply serve to tease the life out of us, although we’re quite sure most MotoGP riders are quite happy with him staying exactly where he is! But that’s not going to happen, bar maybe a one-off, and only if it suits him. He has nothing left to prove in GP, and rightly detests the spotlight put upon himwhen he was part of the circus, mostly because it tended to be negative. He was the first to really take Valentino Rossi to task and, as we’ve seen more and more, many of the Italian’s fans go far beyond vociferous towards anybody who displays the temerity to best the legendary Yamaha rider. But, even they want him to come back, especially now Rossi has as dangerous an opponent as Stoner ever was, in Marc Marquez.