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Well is it really meddling if they just do what is normally done by ending upgrades to not just Martin but Pramac as well given both are switching to different manufacturers for next season?
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Well is it really meddling if they just do what is normally done by ending upgrades to not just Martin but Pramac as well given both are switching to different manufacturers for next season?
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That had not occurred to me.
He was offered an eye watering sum of money to stay on for 2013 if I recall, and turned it down. If nothing else, you have to respect the man for that.
Max Verstappen is another example of a dad beater result too.
Of course we do old boy, because playing 'American pool' with the pockets as big as the Americans average waist size is not really a challenge.
Simon Patterson has been pushing the narrative that the moment Martin signed for Aprilia, he wouldnt be getting any more updates. He has doubled down now that Pramac are leaving too but he does have a point. As much as Ducati are going to try and be impartial, both the team and the rider are leaving for different factories next yr. Stopping updates is the done thing. Look at Adrian Newey at Red Bull F1. Even he is being frozen out of meetings etc now and is pretty much at the track only as an observer.
While there is a grain of truth in that, the ethical thing to do would be equip both title contenders with equal equipment and let them sort it out on track.
It’s unlikely that Ducati will introduce some ground breaking tech mid season, so there’s limited threat of Martin and Pramac taking something significant with them to Aprilia and Yamaha respectively. Most likely it will be incremental updates.
To put it another way, if Martin was staying and Bagnaia was the one leaving next year, would they have stopped giving the latter- a factory team rider- the updates ?
I don't see Ducati being concerned with ethics as they pertain to this battle. Bagnaia is their number 1 rider and 2-time and current champ. Ducati will do what they can to see he becomes a 3-time champ. With Marc on the factory team for '25, Ducati exponentially increase their chances of securing 4 championships in a row, assuming they win this year. I realize you know all of this but I'm bored and wanted to type.
My personal opinion is that Casey is an honorable guy with a strong sense of right, wrong, proper and improper. He never did the playboy thing, dating models and doing magazine covers. He just married Adriana and started a family. He seems to be responsible with money, and has yet to fall afoul of any taxing authorities (zing). I'm sure these values were instilled in him by his parents. If he does have any residual sense of self-importance from his childhood, it manifests in his moral rigidity, which he seeks to impose on all parties within his purview, but that could just be his personality.
Anyway, I'm a Casey backer. To me his outlandish remarks and subtle trolling are a feature of being a fan! I just occasionally kick around counterpoint to make sure I don't become overzealous for any particular rider. Casey still resides in the realm of the sane, imo......if that's possible for sportsmen who compete at the highest level.
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I know they aren't title contenders, but I don't think Miller in 2022 or Bastiannini this yr are getting updates anymore. Zarco certainly got none when he announced his morve to Honda.
I don't think Marquez got any Honda updates after Misano 2023 either? But I have no source on that.
He certainly married a model imo. Adriana is gorgeous.
He got to ride the best motorcycles in the world, win 2 world titles and retired without any financial worries for the rest of his life aged 27 to live what has been mostly a quiet life since. If he is insane then what are the rest of us?
I realise he is the exception rather than the rule but to be able to retire at 27..man that must be so awesome.
I guess that’s the key difference; no issues to freeze updates for also rans, but is it fair to pull the rug from underneath a title contender? I don’t know.
I guess I’ll respect Ducati more if they put Martin on equal machinery until Valencia, even more so if he takes the #1 plate to Aprilia
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If Martin decided to move to Aprilia INSTEAD of Ducati, I would completed agree with them pulling the rug from under him. But, Martin is unique in that he has jumped through every hoop Ducati told him to and got overlooked...twice.
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Well that brings up an interesting question, how do the factories handle outgoing riders? Do they give them updates all the way to the end or do they cut off updates at a certain point?
I think it’s a given that non title contenders are shut off the moment they sign with someone else.
However, if memory serves me right, Lorenzo in his final year with Yamaha had the same equipment as Rossi until the end, because they were still in the title hunt until Suzuka or so. But then again Yamaha was not at the cutting edge of in season development at that point.
Suzuki also gave Viñales and A.Espárgarò up to date equipment until the final race, but that may be because the factory was still new to the game and they needed as many miles as possible on the development parts.
Similar story with P. Espárgarò during his first KTM stint as well.
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I would personally prefer if Ducati keeps giving Martin updates, and it certainly would make me respect Bagnaia more if he wins his third this year.
But, as the article says, it's standard practice to freeze updates when a rider (and in this case the team too) are going to another manufacturer. But, if this happens it will diminish my interest, only a bit, in the rest of the season.
In my opinion, the hoop that Martin had to jump through to get the factory seat was to win the championship last year. In which case he would be a factory rider now. Of course, it's not like Martin deliberately didn't win, but there is at least one thing that he still could have done.
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Simon Patterson writing another non-story, to keep his idea relevant....
I used to follow him and listen to their podcasts, until that site's opinion got too much for me. The anti-KTM pieces bored me at least.
There is no good reason Martin cannot be World Champion, if he doesn't fall off the bike, as he has done of late.
His motorcycle will be good enough, Pramac will want to win the title with him, and no Ducati rider will battle harder with him, mainly because only Bagnaia and Marquez are the only other ones who can keep up with him.
I'm astounded he can make a living, writing these type of articles.
Martin's main and only fight, is with his own mind. He is the Stoner on most days. He is as fast as they come. If he can channel that skill, just as Bagnaia and Marquez have, he is different gravy.
I used to follow him and listen to their podcasts, until that site's opinion got too much for me. The anti-KTM pieces bored me at least.
There is no good reason Martin cannot be World Champion, if he doesn't fall off the bike, as he has done of late.
His motorcycle will be good enough, Pramac will want to win the title with him, and no Ducati rider will battle harder with him, mainly because only Bagnaia and Marquez are the only other ones who can keep up with him.
I'm astounded he can make a living, writing these type of articles.
Martin's main and only fight, is with his own mind. He is the Stoner on most days. He is as fast as they come. If he can channel that skill, just as Bagnaia and Marquez have, he is different gravy.
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Ducati could maintain a level playing field by not giving anyone new parts for the rest of the season
This is the Honda way
I think he should get equal equipment, and hope he does. I am also not a fan of Ducati’s management style.
But as has been pointed out previously he put conditions on Ducati, not the other way around, and as has also been said a further hoop he could have jumped through was to actually win the title last season, and I don’t think his failure to do so was on Ducati. Like MM he basically refused a factory bike at Pramac, for understandable reasons no doubt, and Ducati then had a choice to make themselves. Also on the evidence of what has happened since he should have been chosen ahead of Bastianini 2 years ago, but Bastianini getting the seat wasn’t unreasonable or unfair at the time.
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I am fortunate enough to know of people who have known him and/or had dealings with him and the description you use of 'honorable guy' is very much aligned to the way they speak of him and their interactions. Some, although few of these knew him before he hit the big scene with many having dealt with him through racing only with a couple who have maintained occasional contact outside since his retirement. All cannot speak highly enough of him, but these are Aussies and none of them could be described as 'woke' or 'new age', so for them a spade is a spade.
Like you, I dont mind that he speaks his mind and as an Aussie myself I can sense when he is genuinely 'trolling' as against openly sharing an opinion on which he has been asked to provide input, which it is theset hat most seem to get annoyed with and personally, I laugh.
CS' only issues of late have been the floods that trashed his property and from what I see/hear, out there having fun and trying to play golf (and if people see the videos, he has a decent game going).
As an aside but related, some of the Gypsy Tales type stuff, with some of CS explanations of riding style and technique and wickedly good and for me he is a 'must listen to' when he speaks on this stuff as well as his preferences to remove the technical/electronics/aero as he explains why.
I would have trouble denying that I am an out and out Stoner fanboy, but a good and fair take imo as is your wont.
He was distraught about causing the accident in 2006, and I believe made a decision to not put others at risk henceforth, and pretty much stuck to not making unfair or unsafe moves thereafter, although there was the one crude move, on Barbera I think, in 2012 on a weekend when he appeared rather distracted.
He was actually mostly correct about the issues which concerned him, but could perhaps be over zealous in prosecuting his case. He was obviously totally correct about the dawdling on the racing line thing, for which he was pilloried at the time, and there has unfortunately been post hoc justification of his position. To your point in regard to that issue, when I asked David Emmett what the paddock’s view was he said they think he has a point but is being a .... about it, and even I can’t defend him making Nicky Hayden stand up his bike that time when Nicky was only slow because he was coming out of the pits. I thought he was over the top about the deficiencies of the Indy track as well, but he rather proved his own point by having the crash which caused the fracture at Indy 2012, where he was not alone in crashing. He was also correct at the time of the tyre vote in 2012 about the new tyre being insufficiently robust, with even Valentino later acknowledging his foresight.
Knocking back the money Honda offered him pretty much on a point of principle is not something many would do as has been said, and at least showed him to be someone who would stick to his guns regardless of pretty much anything. He also made a point interesting to me at least about Rossi post Laguna Seca 2008, that he could easily have crashed into Rossi without recriminations rather than putting his bike into the sand, which would have been to his advantage, but that it was not something he would do. He said Rossi knew this and had an advantage from being prepared to use such knowledge, even apart from whether he had more latitude from RD in general. I highly doubt Valentino would have tried either of the Gibernau last corner and LS08 corkscrew “passes” on Toni Elias. Rossi btw seems to have rather reassessed Casey’s worthiness, perhaps a function of MM now being now his it would appear permanent bete noire.
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Racing is a business first and foremost at the MotoGP level now, no doubt the main Ducati sponsors will expect their signage to be on the world champions bike next year, if not I'm guessing that there could be "ramifications" !
