Latest / Rusty's Garage / Casey Stoner (Part 1)

Transcript

Casey Stoner (Part 1) · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:15
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:29
  I'm on the Gold Coast for this one, chatting to two-time MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner.
• 0:35
  I've always had a good rapport with Casey right throughout his race career, even if some of my colleagues didn't.
• 0:42
  This is his story, in his own words.
• 0:44
  Listen to it in full and in context before you form an opinion.
• 0:49
  Maybe it'll even change your view.
• 0:51
  He typically doesn't do these kind of interviews in post-race life where he's largely escaped the limelight.
• 0:58
  For me, it's a story of incredible commitment, one you may never have heard before or perhaps didn't fully appreciate.
• 1:06
  I think it's tremendous that someone from very humble beginnings was able to get there on pure talent and immense tenacity.
• 1:15
  I mean immense.
• 1:16
  After all, it's a game where money absolutely makes a difference in the quality of opportunities in the early years at Grand Prix level.
• 1:24
  It's like he was born to do it, that Casey and bikes were just meant to be.
• 1:29
  But make no mistake, the fire in the belly was a big part of it too.
• 1:34
  Um, I think it was more just me being competitive than necessarily, uh, being a bike because, you know, I believe that anything I sort of stuck my mind to, if I had the time to do it, um, I believe I could have become as successful in, um, not everything of course, but, um, there's certain sports that I know I've picked up very, very late and, you know, I know with the right amount of time or, um.
• 1:56
  a body that's working um you know we could get to a reasonable level on so i think with motorbikes it wasn't necessarily just the love of bikes but the um the love of improvement and trying to be a perfectionist essentially um essentially why i got criticized through my career about being always unhappy because whether i won or lost um sometimes i was unhappy even when i won because i knew i didn't do the best race i could so if i made mistakes i was very hard on myself with it
• 2:26
  And I think that's where it came from, just sort of competitiveness.
• 2:28
  So those tenths of a second out of motorcycles is a fantastic drug for me, I suppose.
• 2:34
  I've seen on socials that you've been doing a bit of golf lately.
• 2:37
  So does that same mentality even apply now when you're trying to improve as a golfer?
• 2:43
  Um, not so much.
• 2:44
  I don't have to, um, I don't have to make it happen.
• 2:48
  Um, it's sort of like, I want to enjoy golf and I want to improve with it, but I don't have to.
• 2:53
  Whereas with motorcycles, I had a fair bit of pressure on me to make it happen.
• 2:58
  Um, and that's very, very different.
• 3:00
  Um, even with cycling, you know, I was always, when I was training, I was trying to, to really get to a reasonably good level.
• 3:07
  Um,
• 3:07
  and that's where my sort of motivation was to train rather than training for motorcycling.
• 3:11
  I was training to be a cyclist, let's say, and that just fed back to motorcycles.
• 3:18
  And it's the same kind of thing with golf.
• 3:20
  I want to be better at it, but it's not as much need.
• 3:23
  So I don't have that same – I'm not as critical on myself.
• 3:27
  I still am a little bit, but nowhere near what I was on a bike.
• 3:30
  Is that a post-racing sort of conscious change that you've made?
• 3:35
  Um, to be honest, even in my later years in racing, um, I learned to be okay with, with bad results.
• 3:42
  Whereas in my early career, um, even in MotoGP, I was, I was far too critical of myself and I think it was good for me to be critical.
• 3:52
  But I felt ashamed half the time when I did make a mistake or I didn't get the result that I was looking for that weekend.
• 3:59
  You know, I was ashamed of myself rather than in my later career, I learned that I can only do what I can do and I cannot do more than that.
• 4:08
  And it's something that I've really tried to implement in every aspect of life and other people's careers as well, is that no matter what happens around you, just do the best you can and you can't do better than that.
• 4:20
  So there's no point in trying or worrying about the future that can go wrong.
• 4:25
  Just sort of live in the moment and do the best.
• 4:27
  Did someone help you with that or was it being around other successful athletes or was it just something that you came to terms with yourself?
• 4:35
  Just something I came to terms with myself.
• 4:38
  There was one thing my trainer, Anthony Pedin, used to be – used to have quite a good saying is happy mind, fast body, which a lot of people –
• 4:50
  The people that believe that if they don't train through the week, then there's no way they can win or no way they can be competitive.
• 4:55
  They've already gone into the weekend.
• 4:57
  Say they've got an injury and they can't train.
• 4:59
  So many people go into that next weekend going, I haven't trained, there's no way I can win.
• 5:04
  There's no way I can do well.
• 5:06
  But if your mind's good, you know you've done the pre-work, your body's going to carry you through it anyway.
• 5:11
  It's going to carry you through the hard times.
• 5:13
  And it did that for me back in 2009 when I was struggling.
• 5:17
  I didn't train for sort of eight months, and I was off completely for three of those months trying to figure out what was wrong before we found out it was lactose.
• 5:24
  And, yeah, it carried me through the rest of that, no problem, because we did the hard yards before.
• 5:31
  But, yeah, just not letting those sort of things get in my way
• 5:35
  And another good thing I like to say is people need to get out of their own way sometimes.
• 5:40
  Those people that are so critical on their training and their regime, as soon as things aren't right, their head's already screwed, but you'll find that often riders and athletes that are injured will have some of the best results they've ever got.
• 5:54
  because they got out of their own way.
• 5:56
  They overcomplicate everything with their own mind and their own thoughts.
• 6:00
  So when they go, oh, I've got no expectations because I'm injured or I'm unwell this weekend, they'll often have their best results because, again, they got out of their own way.
• 6:09
  Come back to the passion for bikes.
• 6:10
  There's some great photos in the book that you did with Matt Roberts and, you know, your dad chasing you around and you're trying to more or less escape the dog as a young fella and things.
• 6:20
  What was that bike and what are your earliest recollections of being on a motorcycle?
• 6:24
  To be honest, I've struggled with my memory in recent times.
• 6:28
  So most of my memories come from home videos or pictures.
• 6:32
  I don't have any.
• 6:34
  How's that?
• 6:35
  I don't know.
• 6:36
  I've really had some health issues in these last years.
• 6:40
  and um struggling a lot with memory and things like that so i don't have any first memory of being on a bike it all comes from what i see on photos i don't remember a passion i don't remember a feeling or an excitement um anything like that so um it all just goes back off what everyone else can see so and i roughly knew what it was like at the time
• 7:01
  Amazing.
• 7:02
  The move ultimately to go racing, there's some terrific stuff in there of people when you were at such a young age.
• 7:11
  I mean, Paul Feeney, originally the Husvana distributor here in Australia, a successful motorcycle shop and dealer owner, at more or less the insistence of your dad to come and see you ride, being wowed by...
• 7:26
  the way you were on the machine and how you had it absolutely maxed out.
• 7:30
  Similar endorsements from guys like Scott Doohan, you chasing Aaron Slyde, who went on to do some great things in superbikes, as this little tacker up against them.
• 7:40
  It was remarkable, mate.
• 7:43
  Yeah, well, Paul Feeney was the Kawasaki distributor at the time.
• 7:46
  So, yeah, I think Dad pested him to come down and watch.
• 7:51
  I mean, getting an opportunity to be on track with those guys was something special.
• 7:56
  Again, I can't remember the day and what it was like.
• 7:59
  I can only imagine what it was like back then as a five-year-old looking up to him.
• 8:04
  You know, I watched every race, every motorsport race basically that existed back then.
• 8:10
  And Mick was there on that day, but I was never on track with him.
• 8:14
  He was on track by himself most of the time or at a different time.
• 8:17
  But, yeah, I mean, it was incredible.
• 8:20
  And, you know, it was nice to get praise off those people and for them to pay attention to such a young kid.
• 8:26
  And it was massive help from Paul that really gave us the kick, I suppose, to...
• 8:33
  get through our dirt track career because without him and without his contacts that he put us in contact with um we would have really struggled to to get through the dirt track years and from that make it to road racing which is in the uk and again you get more help along the way and without those few people those standout people that helped us um you know we certainly wouldn't be where we are today
• 8:56
  Your story, you know, right the way up until you won World Championships is one of struggle, the word that you use, and sacrifice, great sacrifice.
• 9:05
  I want to, in wrapping up the stuff about, you know, Fiend and others watching you as a youngster, they would talk about you, this little tacker,
• 9:15
  bombing it in up the inside under brakes when others were on bigger, higher capacity motorcycles and you were on the gas sooner than them on the way out of corners and things like that.
• 9:24
  It was very clear as a youngster that you had it, mate.
• 9:29
  Um, I think so.
• 9:31
  I mean, I had a lot of good competition as well growing up.
• 9:34
  Uh, there was a few riders in particular that always kept me honest.
• 9:38
  Um, I'd say my greatest competitor was Hayden McBride.
• 9:41
  Um, he's somebody who I believe if he's stuck with the motorcycle route and, and, um, and had the opportunities to sort of keep going.
• 9:49
  Um, yeah.
• 9:52
  You know, I personally don't have any doubt that he would have ended up in MotoGP or at least World Superbikes.
• 9:59
  You know, he was fantastically fast.
• 10:01
  We just managed to get those championships over him each time.
• 10:05
  And it would literally come down to the last race every time between us.
• 10:09
  We were that close of competitors.
• 10:11
  He was a very, very quick rider.
• 10:14
  So, you know, it's things like that that sort of, I suppose, helped us evolve.
• 10:20
  You know, there's always been good competition throughout Australia.
• 10:23
  And during that time, there was a lot of good riders coming through as well.
• 10:27
  Before that, it was the time of Mick and Wayne and Scott and Aaron, all that sort of stuff coming through the same sort of time.
• 10:35
  So it made it...
• 10:38
  it made me have to work that much harder.
• 10:41
  We found that we were winning just about everything in South East Queensland here when we were travelling and when we went down to New South Wales,
• 10:49
  Not necessarily, but kind of got our asses handed to us a little bit.
• 10:53
  The stakes or the competition was tougher?
• 10:56
  Competition was a lot tougher down there.
• 10:57
  So that's why we ended up moving down to the Hunter Valley to chase the competition because the only way to improve yourself is to go wherever the hardest guys are.
• 11:05
  The Hunter Valley makes some pretty tough people down there.
• 11:08
  So we went down there and I suppose learned how to ride a little differently.
• 11:12
  And yeah, that made me a more complete rider and, you know, more complete rider overall.
• 11:18
  Dirt track is something that lots of Aussie motorcycle riders nowadays praise.
• 11:23
  They say that grounding, the skills that you learn from that style of riding.
• 11:27
  And I think in your case, is it fair to say that it really was a great foundation?
• 11:32
  It served you so well right throughout your career, didn't it?
• 11:35
  Fantastic.
• 11:35
  I think in Australia at my time, we didn't have enough opportunities for road racing, you know, mini motos or anything like that to get on a go-kart track.
• 11:46
  We had the Morawaki 80s at one point, but there's still nothing in comparison to a 125.
• 11:51
  Couldn't get on them until you're 16.
• 11:54
  So by that time, your career's already, you're already on the back foot compared to the Europeans.
• 11:59
  So when we get onto the big bikes, then we're okay.
• 12:03
  That's where dirt track comes back to us.
• 12:05
  But when you're on a 125 or nowadays motor three, motor two, but 125 and 250,
• 12:10
  That's a whole different ballgame.
• 12:12
  You've got to trust the front so far.
• 12:14
  You've got to have so much corner speed.
• 12:15
  It's something you don't learn in dirt track, certainly not on the tracks we have.
• 12:20
  And so you really end up on the back foot.
• 12:22
  All the guys coming from the US dirt track or Australia dirt track really struggle with the lower categories.
• 12:27
  because we just don't run that corner speed.
• 12:29
  And now that it's Moto 3, Moto 2, it's a little easier.
• 12:32
  They've got a bit more punch out of the corners.
• 12:34
  You don't need to run the corner speed that you used to have to on a 125.
• 12:38
  And that's something that I really struggle with.
• 12:39
  And you have to get through those categories to get to the big one where the dirt track comes back to you.
• 12:47
  As much as it was an advantage, it was a big disadvantage when we got to Europe.
• 12:52
  You get over there and I think that's why so many people have struggled and failed in the 125 class and often haven't gone past that is because the Europeans just had so much advantage on us riding that corner speed and getting used to riding on slick tyres from such a young age.
• 13:08
  We just didn't have.
• 13:09
  We'll get to that move to the UK and your decision to go down that path at such a young age in a second.
• 13:16
  I want to have a little walk down memory lane with you for a moment here.
• 13:19
  I can recall my buddy Lee Diffie and I in the mid-90s were aspiring commentators wanting to try and make it in television and the like.
• 13:29
  And we would have this arrangement where if he got a better offer, I would try and cover for him on another meeting and vice versa.
• 13:37
  So he was big in dirt track at that stage and he had some opportunity come up somewhere and I subbed for him at, I want to say, the Acuba Nationals at Tamworth.
• 13:46
  I may have even kept the program from way back then and they were awesome days because the…
• 13:52
  The day was filled with races, and I reckon I can recall meeting you for the first time as a young bloke, a real young bloke, and you would have been in more than one class on the day.
• 14:01
  Looking at the book as well, your mum regularly kept like a diary, more or less, didn't she, of how you went in not just two classes, sometimes three.
• 14:10
  Most of the time, four.
• 14:12
  Mega.
• 14:13
  So I think we're the only...
• 14:17
  I'm the only person in Australia to win four Aussie titles in a single meeting.
• 14:21
  We managed to win five as well because my birthday fell on the right date that I could run Big Wheel 80 at the same weekend.
• 14:32
  Tamworth was probably...
• 14:33
  my worst track in Australia, to be honest.
• 14:35
  It was always a challenge for me.
• 14:37
  It's actually where I did my shoulder that ended up playing up on me in 2006.
• 14:41
  A kid crashed in front of me in turn one, went over the handlebars, tore all my shoulder ligaments and ended up having to get that fixed in 2006, which was 10 years later.
• 14:53
  Testing, I was just riding and it started really playing up to a point where I couldn't ride anymore, so we ended up having to get the rotator cuff fixed and all...
• 15:00
  But it dated back to that.
• 15:02
  Dated back to that.
• 15:03
  I'd had nothing but problems since that moment.
• 15:05
  And that's where my ligament problem started.
• 15:08
  I didn't break many bones throughout my career, almost none.
• 15:11
  But I sure as hell tore some ligaments, which they're not fun to try and come back from.
• 15:28
  The pump and hold method for brake bleeding is when the brake pedal is pressed while one bleed screw at a time is opened, allowing air to escape.
• 15:38
  Diff did a great story for a show called RPM, which ran on Channel 10 and still does for many years, a magazine show on motorsport.
• 15:46
  He was in England at the time and he was working on the World Superbike Championship.
• 15:49
  And he covered meeting a young Casey Stoner and his family, living out of a bus, doing it enormously tough, trying to make your way in Europe for the first time.
• 16:01
  Give people a sense of why you left Australia to go and chase that dream, but also how touch and go it was.
• 16:08
  I mean, mum and dad more or less put it all on the line, didn't they?
• 16:11
  Yeah, very much so.
• 16:13
  Um...
• 16:14
  You know, we, I suppose, through several things, didn't make a lot of friends in dirt track in Australia.
• 16:24
  And there was one class, Marawaki 80 class, which you could run when you were 14.
• 16:29
  And so we went.
• 16:31
  got my license for it but to race you had to be a member of a club and there was only one club going at the time and that was run by all my competitors parents and they revoked my um they revoked my uh application to to join the club so that basically stopped us any chance racing in australia before i was 16 how'd you feel about that
• 16:53
  I mean, I was young at the time, so that just always made me more determined.
• 16:57
  Whenever I heard anybody say anything, you know, you hadn't raced some competitors in years and say they were from Queensland or Victoria or somewhere else, and then they start talking and someone's going to kick your ass, and it always gave me a little extra motivation, yeah.
• 17:14
  So...
• 17:15
  So, yeah, it was the same kind of deal.
• 17:17
  And we looked at a lot of options.
• 17:18
  We looked at going through Asia, through the Underbone Series in Indonesia and all that sort of stuff, just looking for an option.
• 17:26
  And through my dad's right of abode going to the UK, we got our chance over there.
• 17:32
  But yeah, I mean, we got over there and we were doing well, but we nearly ran out of money after three months.
• 17:37
  So it was, you know, I think at the time, it was three Aussie dollars pretty much to one British pound.
• 17:44
  So everything just disappears very, very quickly.
• 17:47
  Yeah.
• 17:48
  How did you keep the dream going then and if it came that close?
• 17:52
  I mean, it was all thanks to Lloyd Lifestyle.
• 17:56
  George Lloyd was running a company that imported leathers and helmets and things like that.
• 18:03
  a person called Ian Newton who runs the Aprilia Challenge over in the UK.
• 18:08
  He knew how much we were struggling because we spent a lot of time with him trying to understand how everything worked over there.
• 18:14
  And he put us in contact with George.
• 18:17
  George sponsored us and paid for my running of that year, which allowed us to kind of live, gave dad a job as well, and pretty much helped us survive.
• 18:27
  You know, without George, we really, I don't think we would have survived through that year.
• 18:32
  And then through those opportunities came.
• 18:35
  We did a couple of races in the Spanish Championship, approved enough to Alberto Puj to put us on the program the next year.
• 18:41
  Managed to get to that and it all, you know, the rest is history.
• 18:44
  We got into 250s through Checking Ello because Pooj put us in contact.
• 18:48
  And, yeah, it's just one step after the other, but it's one important person in your career making those steps happen that gave us a chance to get to where we ended up.
• 18:59
  Did you enjoy the road racing bikes?
• 19:03
  And, I mean, you've kind of alluded to some of the challenges and the differences to what you'd encountered in dirt track terms here, but did you enjoy it?
• 19:10
  Yeah.
• 19:12
  Quite honestly, I didn't mind road racing, but I actually never found a passion for it like I had with dirt.
• 19:20
  I've always loved dirt track.
• 19:21
  I've always loved the dirt, even though I haven't ridden it pretty much since I started road racing.
• 19:25
  I've done very little.
• 19:28
  I always found road racing not so much a job, but I found it...
• 19:34
  You know, that was my challenge, those tents where I enjoyed it.
• 19:39
  You put a lap timer on my bike, I was happy.
• 19:40
  I just kept going around until I just kept getting better and better and learning how to get through certain corners that I struggle with.
• 19:47
  It was always kicking goals for me.
• 19:50
  I never necessarily had a huge passion for road racing.
• 19:54
  I think it was just the...
• 19:56
  the fine details that kept me, kept the spark going for me with that.
• 20:01
  You mentioned Alberto Puglia a moment ago and Lucio Cechinello for that matter as well.
• 20:05
  I have just come in the last few weeks from a function with both of them at Phillip Island around the Grand Prix.
• 20:11
  Both still speak enormously, highly of you.
• 20:14
  Along the way, supporters like those that you've mentioned, but also people that kind of mentor, those that are immersed in the game like those two, are immensely important as well, aren't they?
• 20:25
  Yeah, very much so.
• 20:28
  I think that's probably one thing I missed out on and something that would have probably helped my career last a little longer.
• 20:37
  Once, you know, Alberto basically was forced to choose between myself or Danny when we were coming up through the movie star ranks, I suppose.
• 20:48
  and he chose Danny through Spain.
• 20:50
  He had a good relationship with him.
• 20:52
  We all still kept a great relationship, but he had to go with Danny and choose one.
• 20:56
  And from that moment on, we were kind of on our own, and, you know, we'd struggle year after year.
• 21:02
  You know, we struggled for results.
• 21:04
  We struggled to get contracts.
• 21:06
  You've got Europeans coming in underneath you trying to put money in front of team owners' hands, but...
• 21:12
  we had help from the Grand Prix Association because we're Australian and one of the only ones in the championship.
• 21:20
  So that sort of helped us, I suppose, sometimes keep a seat when maybe we wouldn't have.
• 21:26
  But what a lot of people don't know is that I didn't have a contract and I didn't have a bike until the start of each year.
• 21:32
  I didn't have it done the year before like everyone else gets done.
• 21:35
  We literally had nothing until the start of each year
• 21:38
  until 06, when I was signed with Ducati at the end of the year ready for 2007.
• 21:43
  That was the only end of year that I was signed off ready to go for the next year.
• 21:49
  And then, of course, it continued after that.
• 21:51
  But before then, I never had a contract for the next year.
• 21:54
  Every single one of them fell through.
• 21:56
  So does that mean that every Australian summer you were kind of hoping, not knowing, it could have all been over in some respects?
• 22:04
  Very much so.
• 22:07
  It was quite tight at times, just not knowing where we were going to be, if we're going to be in 250s, 125s.
• 22:14
  We had contracts just constantly fall through, which is, you know, everybody's just playing the game.
• 22:19
  um say using me to get their riders to pay a bit more or ride for less and all this sort of stuff so this happened time and time again um and yeah it was it was quite hard as an aussie um especially when we had a reputation for being the crasher and all this sort of stuff um but yeah it was it was it was hard going but it is for a lot of riders um
• 22:42
  especially ones that don't have the support with the money, just to get them across the line so that the sponsor or the manufacturer goes, okay, yeah, these guys can have that bike.
• 22:52
  Lots of people in life talk about, you know, if you want to play on the big stage, you've got to put up with all the things that come with that.
• 22:59
  But as a young man, you're exposed to the immense politics and gamesmanship that goes on in the background.
• 23:06
  Did that leave a bad taste in your mouth about that side of the business at that point in time, given that that was happening?
• 23:12
  At that point in time, no.
• 23:15
  You know, I never took those as...
• 23:18
  I mean, of course, we were never happy about it, but at the same time, never looked too harshly upon it.
• 23:23
  I think that happened more with what happened in 2009.
• 23:28
  I got a bad taste in my mouth from that, and it never really got better, to be honest.
• 23:32
  Just explain that for people that are listening that don't understand.
• 23:36
  So in 2009, when I had my... Well, my fatigue issues would end up being lactose intolerance.
• 23:44
  We had a lot of people that, of course, you think of friends you've had great relationships with, you've worked your ass off for.
• 23:52
  And within a month, not even, of stepping aside for a little while because I was struggling that year, you know, we were vomiting after every race.
• 23:59
  I just couldn't physically ride the bike anymore.
• 24:01
  And we had no idea.
• 24:02
  I'd been through every doctor imaginable trying to figure it out.
• 24:06
  Nobody really could until I came back to Australia and did things my own way.
• 24:11
  But basically a lot of people we thought very highly of turned their backs on us very, very quickly and we realised that it's very much a business for everyone then.
• 24:21
  And it sort of changed the taste for me.
• 24:23
  For me, it was all about being part of a team.
• 24:26
  It wasn't a one-man sport, even though it kind of is.
• 24:28
  It's not.
• 24:29
  You need your team there.
• 24:31
  I love that aspect of it, going through thick and thin, you know, win and lose together.
• 24:36
  But, yeah, there were certain people that, yeah, really turned their backs and manufacturers that,
• 24:42
  um you know hadn't achieved anything before we got there and they turned their backs on us instantly offered my competitors double my pay things like that it's just it left a really bad taste in our mouth for the short amount of time i was gone uh it was amazing how quickly people um people like to walk all over you so that actually gave me a bit of determination for the next couple of years to um to really make a change and make things happen so um i then sort of followed my dreams
• 25:11
  We'll come back to the bikes in a second.
• 25:13
  Does that lactose intolerance still kind of affect you to this day?
• 25:15
  Are you very careful with diet and things like that?
• 25:17
  Yeah.
• 25:18
  Not as much these days because I'm not at the peak level fitness.
• 25:23
  I still don't have lactose, but say if it's got a bit of cheese or something like that, I'm a little bit more relaxed with it.
• 25:29
  I've still got my tablets that I take, so it breaks it all down.
• 25:32
  It's not a problem.
• 25:34
  I'm actually struggling with some chronic fatigue at the moment, which is not good since about August, September last year it hit me.
• 25:43
  started realising something was wrong when golf was becoming very physical sport for me and yeah so I've been on and off different tablets and things like that trying to help combat that and get me through the day a little bit more.
• 25:57
  I hope you get on top of that mate.
• 26:00
  Two stroke or four stroke because when you came through dirt track in Australia you're in the early sort of second and third tier if you like of what we now know as MotoGP back then it was
• 26:13
  So what's your preference if you had to pick one or the other?
• 26:16
  Two-stroke every day of the week.
• 26:18
  Awesome.
• 26:18
  Tell me why.
• 26:20
  It was actually something that...
• 26:22
  really disappointed me when I got to MotoGP was the moment that it went four stroke and that couldn't have hurt me anymore I never would have loved to have ridden a 500 like that like Mick and those boys I never wanted to ride a four stroke still to this day if I get any option if you give me two bikes I'll take the two stroke um so it really hurts I think there's an art to riding a two stroke uh whereas I think four strokes are very very forgiving um
• 26:46
  how to ride their power, how to ride so many aspects of them.
• 26:49
  They're very, very forgiving.
• 26:52
  And that's why I think Moto3, Moto2...
• 26:55
  I'm just not seeing that same level of detail that there was in the past.
• 27:01
  And even down to the engineers, I used to love it because you knew there was a few engineers in the paddock that were the best two-stroke engineers.
• 27:09
  And you saw their bikes flying every time.
• 27:11
  They always had them pretty well dialed.
• 27:13
  There's an art to every aspect of the old two-strokes.
• 27:16
  Whereas these days, you've got the Moto2 class, everyone's on the same engine.
• 27:20
  And even Moto3, their engines are all pretty close.
• 27:24
  there's no there's no getting the jetting right there's no you know the whole team was part of the result back in the day whereas these days it's very much just the rider and a bit of set up so I don't see it as being quite the the passion sport I suppose in every aspect you've got the mechanics that just work on the bikes and
• 27:46
  everything's done by computer and engineers now on on the computers and all their parameters um but yeah you don't have that touch and feel like the old engineers used to have so it was the same for a rider you you really had to know how to ride a two-stroke uh and when it wasn't running well on that particular day and it was a little um tough to come on the first part of the throttle things like you had to you had to make your way around it you had to learn how to ride it and still get try and get a result out of it so um yeah i miss those days
• 28:13
  You're a competitive person, so maybe you didn't have a hero per se, but was it McDewan?
• 28:19
  Who were the guys that sort of inspired you back as a young man?
• 28:24
  Without a doubt Mick.
• 28:26
  Not only because of his results and things like that, but what he came back from.
• 28:31
  Mick was my guy before he had the accident and I was distraught when he did have the accident and I didn't think he would come back and do what he did.
• 28:38
  So the fact that he managed to pick himself back up from that and come back to the top and on and off the track.
• 28:47
  Mick leads the way for me.
• 28:49
  So in my opinion, nobody's ever matched Mick's results because nobody's ever had to go through what he did to get the results he did.
• 28:59
  And yeah, he's still always been the shining light.
• 29:02
  I never wanted to be better than Mick.
• 29:04
  I always wanted to be as good.
• 29:06
  So if I had the opportunity, which I didn't, I didn't do the job.
• 29:09
  But if I had won five championships, I wouldn't have won six.
• 29:12
  I would have called it quit right then.
• 29:14
  Is that right?
• 29:14
  Yeah.
• 29:15
  So, you know, he really paved the way for me.
• 29:18
  And no matter how hard things got, it was always a good reminder to know what he went through.
• 29:23
  Let me paint a little picture for the audience here in that answer because Casey gave it with a real smile as well.
• 29:28
  So there's real admiration there for what Mick Doohan did.
• 29:33
  When you got that break to get on the Ducati and, you know, move into the Premier class, when you rode the bike for the first time, it set off a phenomenal chapter for you.
• 29:45
  But what was it like the first time you rode it?
• 29:48
  And have you got vivid memories of that?
• 29:51
  Of the Ducati, yeah.
• 29:53
  So I rode the Honda the year before and I remember from the Aprilia 250 to the Honda MotoGP, the Honda MotoGP was way easier to ride.
• 30:02
  The Aprilia 250 was a handful.
• 30:04
  It was a really difficult bike to ride.
• 30:05
  In what way?
• 30:07
  In every way.
• 30:08
  It's power, the chassis used to want to...
• 30:10
  freaking high side you to the moon all the time so getting it right was very very tricky and i get on a moto gp bike and it's going to slide and move a little bit more that dirt track comes back to me so with the 250 i couldn't use my dirt track skills still but as soon as i got on a moto gp bike it's like oh this is comfortable this is home
• 30:27
  Um, and then when I got off the Honda 990 and we went back to the 800s, which everything, they all became light switches because they're trying to get maximum power out of them.
• 30:36
  In particular, Ducati, I think it revved to 21,000 RPM in that test.
• 30:41
  They knocked it back to, um, to get engine liability by the next season.
• 30:45
  But, um...
• 30:48
  I remember my first few laps and first exit, all I thought was, what the hell have I done?
• 30:55
  Why, why?
• 30:57
  It was an absolute pig to ride.
• 30:59
  Really?
• 31:00
  The gearbox was rough.
• 31:01
  The engine was rough.
• 31:02
  The whole bike vibrated.
• 31:04
  It was worse than a two-stroke.
• 31:06
  um didn't want to go around corners didn't want to come out of corners it's trying to buck you and high side you and um i just thought wow this is going to be a really long year because um yeah after coming off the honda from the year before which was just the most silky smooth beautiful bike and then getting on that i thought yeah there's no way we're getting any results on this thing so um
• 31:27
  It was nice.
• 31:28
  By the end of that couple of days, we started to get a feel for it, get used to the thing bucking and jumping around.
• 31:33
  We still couldn't get it to turn, and we never did.
• 31:37
  But we started finding out where its strengths were.
• 31:39
  We could find some grip coming out of the corners and different things like that.
• 31:43
  And of course, the top speed was fantastic.
• 31:45
  We had no bottom end, but as long as we could get out of the corners and try and use some of that grip, then we could keep that momentum down the straight.
• 31:53
  But yeah, that first exit...
• 31:56
  and I guarantee it was the exact thing that went through Valentino's mind when he jumped on the Ducati the first time.
• 32:04
  Most people bring up the fact that you really were the one to tame that beast.
• 32:08
  There's a great, you know, many riders that have followed you that struggled for whatever reason.
• 32:14
  And, you know, maybe even you could argue now that Dovey gets on top of it to, you know, to an extent.
• 32:21
  Why did it click for you?
• 32:22
  Why did it gel for you, given the problems that you said you had to begin with?
• 32:25
  And clearly you worked enormously hard to try and iron the thing out too, didn't you?
• 32:29
  I don't think it was necessarily the bike that clicked with me.
• 32:33
  It was my second year in.
• 32:35
  I finally had a tyre manufacturer that was actually giving me decent tyres because being a satellite rider and third-tier satellite rider the year before, we struggled a lot with tyres.
• 32:47
  The bike was fantastic.
• 32:48
  It was capable of winning races in 2006, but we weren't given the same tyres that everyone else was.
• 32:54
  um but in 2008 we had a tine manufacturer we had a factory bike so we knew that we were going to be getting uh the best that they had to give us to to attain the best result you know it wasn't just going to be um playing the game of who gets what um like it was the year before and honestly i think it's um
• 33:17
  I don't know how to say it, but it's my lack of pride.
• 33:21
  I mean, I've still got pride and a little bit of arrogance.
• 33:24
  Everybody does.
• 33:25
  But I wasn't always sitting there going, the grass is greener on the other side.
• 33:30
  That's the bike I had to ride.
• 33:31
  So that's the bike I tried to do the work with.
• 33:33
  So whatever I had, I just did the best job I could with it every weekend.
• 33:37
  Some weekends it worked for us very well.
• 33:39
  Other weekends it didn't.
• 33:40
  We had to settle for average results.
• 33:43
  But I think it was just the fact that...
• 33:46
  I didn't always look across to the other garages or the other bikes and go, oh, we've got no chance this weekend because the Yamaha's working on that track or the Honda's working on that track.
• 33:56
  We always just concentrated on ourselves, focused on ourselves and did the best job we could.
• 34:00
  And I think that's what, you know, the results started to come to us.
• 34:07
  That's the end of part one of my chat with Casey Stoner.
• 34:10
  Make sure you check out the second instalment where he opens up on that once intense rivalry with Valentino Rossi, his move into supercars, and the reason behind his decision to stop racing.
• 34:23
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 34:27
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 34:31
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 34:38
  Listener.