I wish I had read Stoner's biography sooner. He spent most of his early years trying to make the best of the machinery he got. With great success at that, and he never departed from this 'humble' approach to whatever bike he had to ride. He was particularly fond of the Honda since it was an easier bike for him to tame. I don't recall him speaking so much about his riding style, but more about a bike's characteristics and what he needed to do to it to make it go fast. He was clearly VERY special, a true alien.
Of course, this doesn't mean that he always got dud machinery to go quickly relative to the other bikes on the grid. What was invariably the case, is that he would be faster or as fast as anyone else with the same machinery.
What does all that have to do with Zarco? I guess it shows him up more than anything else. I don't think a top team will have much interest in him if he doesn't start delivering soon. He has no track record in MotoGP to earn him the same patience that Lorenzo has enjoyed while at Ducati and now Honda.[/QUOTEp
Everything Stoner said in his autobiography is not necessarily true of course, but it seems a fair bet that it was how he himself perceived things to be. From my reading of the book it seemed to him that it was equally unacceptable both for him to be dominant on a bike that had never won a championship before or riding for a marque for which his idol Doohan had been lauded for winning 5 successive titles. The return to the usual backbiting about riders from that element among fandom a scant few weeks after Simoncelli’s death seems to have crowned his disenchantment with gp bike racing.
