Having travelled from the other side of the world to holiday in Athens with his wife, Casey Stoner has also stopped off in Italy to attend the Fair Play Menarini prizegiving, which opened yesterday evening in Florence: “It’s an honour to be selected for this prize, it’s fantastic. It’s been very difficult to travel recently with everything going on and so it’s wonderful to see everyone meeting up again and, like I’ve said, it’s an enormous privilege” confirms the Australian who, during “The champions tell all" talk, spoke about the current championship, one that appears balanced and unpredictable.

Casey: “I think MotoGP has lost of lot of fans”

The two-time world champion thinks that MotoGP is no longer the same post-Rossi, the Italian having closed an important period in the history of this sport. As for Valentino, Casey opines: “He wasn’t so strong in the final years and wasn’t in the mix for the title, so not so much has changed without him. But MotoGP has definitely lost a lot of fans who would come to the races to see Valentino.”

An unpredictable season

The current championship is proving entertaining with its many tightly fought battles, the level of competitiveness making it hard to make predictions, even for someone who has racing in the blood: "It’s been hard to understand MotoGP over the last year, because you see a very different list of results from race to race. The winner of one GP might finish in the top five or six the following week, or maybe worse. So it’s very difficult to see who’s consistently strong. I’m not saying the bikes are easy to ride, but it looks like everyone is able to get close to maximum performance a little more easily, which makes it more difficult to understand who’s really making the difference. I have the feeling that some riders who are up front wouldn’t be there if the bikes weren’t so manageable".

Casey does single out Pecco Bagnaia though, who he sees as a likely successor to Valentino Rossi: "He’s a good guy, he has my former mechanics and he’s working hard. He’s made too many mistakes this year, but unless you’re in his situation you can’t understand, and it’s easy to judge from outside, so I prefer not to comment. But the speed is there. Maybe you just have to accept that you can’t win every race, and then finish a few more races but, I repeat, it’s very easy to comment on mistakes from the outside”.

Translated by Heather Watson

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