Casey Stoner points finger of blame for Valentino Rossi v Marc Marquez feud

Casey Stoner has weighed in on the Valentino Rossi-Marc Marquez spat that has dominated headlines on-and-off in MotoGP since 2015.

It’s a feud that still captures the raging imagination of fans from across the MotoGP spectrum even 10 years on, especially as Marquez now prepares to team up with Rossi’s protege, Francesco Bagnaia, at Ducati this year.

For Stoner, it’s also one in which Marquez has “deserved” the criticism levelled by some at him.

“Marc [Marquez], to a certain degree, deserved his criticism,” Stoner said on the Ducati Diaries podcast.

“He tried to get in there.”

Stoner affirmed, though, that the blame for the whole spat lay at Rossi’s door – Marquez was simply responding to an attack.

“Even though people blame Marc for the whole thing,” Stoner said, “people forget that Valentino [Rossi] started it.

“Marc’s Marc, we’ve watched him do that all through his racing, and then Valentino started a war of words.

“They were all friends, and all the rest of it, then Valentino started something, and then Marc retaliated because he didn’t like it.

“And then of course everybody blows up about that, forgetting that Valentino went and poked the bear.”

Stoner explained that the fallout between Rossi and Marquez was a tactical error from the former.

“If somebody rides aggressively, and you know that they’re capable of that,” he said, “don’t go and think you’re above them, to scare them out of it – you’re not going to scare someone like Marc Marquez out of it.

“So, all he’s done, during a championship year that he potentially could have won again, is literally poke the worst rider on the grid to poke: someone that can beat you, someone that’s faster than you, and someone that can potentially take you out of a race or a championship.”

The Australian added that he feels Rossi was trying to play mental games with Marquez that had already stopped working in the late-2000s when Stoner, Dani Pedrosa, and Jorge Lorenzo stepped up to the premier class on factory bikes and could challenge the Italian, who had dominated the sport since 2001.

“I think when Valentino was at his height – before myself, Dani [Pedrosa], Jorge [Lorenzo] got there – he used to be able to get in the minds of the riders around him, and I still think he believed that that happened,” Stoner said.

“But all he did when we were there, the younger generation I suppose, was strengthen us. We’d learnt his tricks, we’d learnt what he’s capable of, and then we learnt our way around that situation.

“So, that was a mistake on his part, losing control basically, in the media, starting a feud with Marc, and then getting too involved in that race in Malaysia and, as much as Marc copped it, somewhat deservingly, Valentino started to unravel that himself.”

Stoner and Rossi buried the hatchet of their own rivalry when the Australian made a surprise appearance in Tavullia late last year, riding at the VR46 Ranch.