Eddie and Mick remain very close to the top of my personal pantheon, and imo Mick couldn’t reasonably have been asked to do much more than he did on the bikes of his era. He also started late in the first place having started in superbikes, and won all 5 titles after a fairly horrendous leg injury which nearly cost him his leg and not just his prospects for winning titles. If MM wins another title after his last 4 years including his own injury problems and at the age when Mick was winning his last titles he definitely exceeds Mick even imo though.I watched that era too. He was a great rider and that is a good story about the brakes, I bet that bloke was very careful on the brakes after that!
Different bikes and tyres back then but I enjoyed watching Rainey, Schwantz and Doohan more. They got the bikes more out of shape, particularly Schwantz and Doohan. Lawson kept it all alot tidier which worked well for him. Rainey was very bloody good. .... way for his career to end
That determination and ability to stuff a bike so hard into a corner and come out the other side places Marquez above them all for me but yes it is hard to compare different eras with their tyres and bike differences. I will make the point that Marquez is doing his stuff on a heavier machine. His ability to save that front still stuns me.
I am a Stoner tragic, but even more objectively he is an interesting case. Imo no one has ridden better or more spectacularly than Casey did in the 2 years he won the titles, he did the impossible in a fairly equal fashion to MM in those years imo even if by employing different methodology, and the way he could find the fastest way around a track in a couple of laps on pretty much any bike remains highly impressive and close to unique, again imo. He didn’t of course in any way challenge MM for sustained excellence/drive/will to win, not even managing to put together two successive seasons of consistent peak genius level riding, which he had the chance to do on the Honda in 2012 if not so much riding a Ducati. I do think as he does that he would have destroyed the field and won the 2012 title in a canter on the original version of the Honda 1000 before Dorna’s interventions, he was ridiculously fast in pre-season testing, but he still had good enough equipment imo to win the title if he had managed to have more focus.
Last edited: