As with many things including the dawdling on the racing line thing he prosecuted during his career Casey is basically right but over eggs the pudding.imo.
Sure his Ducati title and MM’s latter Honda titles were due to riding talent exploiting speed in the respective bikes that no one else had the wherewithal to use. Plenty of titles have been won by the best bike though, often with the best rider aboard which is what happened historically, the top riders ending up on the best bike, although the likes of Doohan and Rossi may have had something to do with their bikes becoming the best.
The two riders still in contention for the title are definitely the best GP24 riders out there, and quite likely among the best period imo, these bikes are still not easy to ride cf the number of dnfs for both of them, I think the bikes have a tendency to let go unpredictably whereas previous bikes with less rider aids had a limit riders knew they were approaching or trying to exceed.
Basically though if Dorna was trying to equalise the field they have failed spectacularly, even in the era before the current Ducati era at least riders of both Yamahas and Hondas, if not very many of them, could win races and other marques occasionally got a look in, Suzuki to the extent of winning a title. Gigi is great and all but I am less interested in seeing an engineering tour de force than seeing riders compete with each other, and that the current Ducati could be and has been engineered to overcome the riding talent advantage MM had is not admirable, again imo.
We had this debate regarding rider vs engineering/electroniic aids in 2007, and David Emmett ran it on his own site, although this was based on a false premise, that Stoner was winning on a bike which rode itself rather than one from which it was very difficult to extract the potential dominant pace the bike possessed .
So Casey is probably correct overall, the 2007 Ducati and Honda for MM’s last few titles were designed to be as fast as possible with the hope someone could ride them, while the current Ducati was designed to a significant degree with the purpose of overcoming what MM could uniquely bring as a rider. Presiozi and Ducati actually said way back when that they didn’t think they could beat Valentino with a conventional bike, and it was well reported that MM just wanted his Honda to be made as fast as possible with him dealing with any issues of the bike being unrideable. This in the end led Honda to a dead end of course, and Ducati also eventually went to a conventional chassis. I do wonder whether KTM’s current CF etc approach will eventually work out as well, particularly since they seem currently to be short of money to throw at it.
It will be interesting to see how riders of the talent of Martin, and Acosta with a year’s experience, will go next season. iIf they are uncompetitive then Ducati likely really does have an insuperable advantage and Dorna will have contrived the opposite of the purported aim of their equalisation measures.
Unfortunately (imo at least) in the short term if Honda and Yamaha are to succeed against Ducati they will need to do so by means of aero etc. I guess we can hold out some hope for the new formula.
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