Valentino Rossi ended his active career as a MotoGP rider on November 14, 2021. The one from Tavullia won nine world titles and participated in memorable duels with motorcycling legends, such as Max Biaggi, Dani Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Márquez. And while hostility towards his rivals might have increased the tension on the track, according to Casey Stoner , Rossi might have been more successful had he not created “unnecessary enmities” on the tarmac.
“Valentino was definitely a good guy,” Stoner introduced. “He was nice to me before I was his opponent. But when I became an opponent, he flipped the switch and made me one of his enemies.”
“It was tough,” she recalls on the ‘ Gypsy Tales’ podcast. “We could have respected each other. I respected him, but he didn’t respect me.”
Valentino Rossi’s fans made “life difficult” for Casey Stoner
Stoner had to live with being Rossi’s biggest opponent for a long time. In those years, some unpleasant scenes controversially involved the fans of ‘Il dottore’.
“There were several times when people tried to push me on my way to the box,” recalls the Australian.
“These people got in the way and tried everything to cause a crash and an injury so I couldn’t drive,” Stoner said, showing annoyance at Rossi’s silence: “Valentino never said anything about it.”
“He put on his side the media around him and the fans as well,” he added.
When a new generation entered MotoGP in the mid-2000s, Rossi found it difficult to defend his supremacy. “His biggest mistake was creating images of enmity,” explains Stoner.
“He made me and Marc (Marquez) enemies unnecessarily. He shouldn’t have done that,” says Stoner, who believes the 2015 MotoGP season would have been different had Rossi acted differently.
“That’s the worst thing you can do, because those people want to make sure you don’t succeed. Those people don’t want you to be the center of attention,” says Stoner. “You have fewer problems when you have fewer enemies near you,” he added.
