"Stoner Stings Rossi, Burgess
Thursday, December 29, 2011

Just ask anyone who crossed Mick Doohan or Mat Mladin: Hell hath no fury like a spiteful Aussie.

Casey Stoner showed the same Down Under venom during the holiday season, taking special delight in ruling MotoGP in his first season with Repsol Honda while supernova Valentino Rossi was winless for Ducati a year after Stoner won three races on the Desmosedici.

After he announced his decision to leave Yamaha for Ducati, Rossi criticized Stoner by saying it was impossible to measure the quality of the Desmosedici GP10 because Stoner wasn't pushing it hard enough. Rossi's longtime crew chief, Jerry Burgess, also said he could fix Ducati's persistent front-end troubles in 80 seconds.

Fast-forward one year. Rossi was winless for the first time in his 16-year Grand Prix career. And the unpredictable front end of the various flavors of GP11 confounded Burgess and the entire Ducati garage all season.

"The whole thing with Valentino saying I hadn't been pushing hard enough was nothing new," Stoner said. "At one stage, it was the Ducati was the best bike on the grid, and I had the best tires and everything else. This talk followed me and plagued me throughout my time at Ducati until Valentino got on the bike and showed that nothing different happened to when (Marco) Melandri got on the bike or Nicky (Hayden) got on it.

"I knew that when he got on the bike he was not going to be any faster than me. I was 100 percent sure of that. He complained about his shoulder injury at the start of the season, but he got his best result with his shoulder injury. As soon as his shoulder injury went, he got worse. The excuses didn't stop until the end of the season when they just had to start admitting that they didn't know what direction to go.

"The reason this championship does taste sweet has a lot to do with Valentino and Jerry and the criticism they gave us that we couldn't develop a bike and didn't know what we were doing. Clearly they are 10 times more confused than we ever were about what direction to go in."

Starting this season, the Moto2 and Moto3 riders will not be allowed to park their campers and motorhomes in the paddock. Only MotoGP riders will enjoy this

Won,t be long before DORNA totally destroys the GP as we know it.GPOne has this story

The reason why they cannot keep there campers in the padock is so there is more space for the hospitality/sponsors. But the problem is that the moto/2 and moto/3 have to find and pay for the own accommodation

Thursday - April 5th
18:00-18:40 - Moto3 Free Practice 1
18:55-19:40 - Moto2 Free Practice 1
19:55-20:40 - MotoGP Free Practice 1
20:55-21:35 - Moto3 Free Practice 2
21:50-22:35 - Moto2 Free Practice 2

Friday - April 6th
18:00-18:45 - MotoGP Free Practice 2
19:00-19:40 - Moto3 Free Practice 3
19:55-20:40 - Moto2 Free Practice 3
20:55-21:40 - MotoGP Free Practice 3

Saturday - April 7th
18:00-18:40 - Moto3 Qualifying
18:55-19:40 - Moto2 Qualifying
19:55-20:55 - MotoGP Qualifying
21:20-21:40 - Moto3 Warm Up
21:55-22:15 - Moto2 Warm Up

Sunday - April 8th
18:00-18:20 - MotoGP Warm Up
19:00 - Moto3 Race
20:20 - Moto2 Race
22:00 - MotoGP Race

There has been talk that if the gap between the CRT and factory bikes is too large, that penalizations or at least further restrictions could be put to the factories. What do you think about that move if it were to happen?
"This is a tricky situation. At nearly every country around the world you go to racetracks and you have Mazdas racing Ferraris. How does that happen? You restrict the faster guy or lighten up the slower guy. I believe Moto2 has opened a few eyes. You’ve got a group of guys at the front bumping bars and five guys who could win a race which makes it really exciting…as for MotoGP, do I think it’s unfair to restrict the factories? I don’t know the answer to that. We need better and closer racing in MotoGP. How to make that happen is the question."