Rossi Already Ahead of Stoner
Lots of attention has rightly been focussed on the travails of Valentino Rossi on the Marlboro Ducati. Far from his magical transformation of the Yamaha from dog to debut winner in 2004, his results on the Ducati have been disappointing for many fans, leading some to lament the loss of Casey Stoner. However the record shows that he is already far ahead of Stoner’s 2010 Ducati effort.
If we compare the 2011 season for Rossi so far with how Stoner fared in 2010 you might be surprised at the results. Rossi opened his Ducati career with a 7th at Qatar and backed it up with an action packed 5th at Jerez that included a ride back through the field after crashing and taking Stoner out of the race. In contrast, Casey Stoner opened his 2010 Ducati season by crashing out of the lead at Qatar and then finished 5th in Spain. With two rounds completed then Rossi has 20 points, almost double the 11 that Stoner had last year at the same time point.
This performance gap is likely to persist, at least for awhile, as Stoner crashed out again at the 3rd round last year before finishing in 4th place during round 4. What this means is that Rossi already has more points after 2 rounds than Stoner did after 3 and assuming he can achieve at least an 11th place finish at Estoril next month, he will have amassed more points in 3 races than Stoner did in 4.
Given his shoulder injury and the apparent wrong direction taken by the Ducati squad over the winter, Rossi’s results seem not too shabby. If his shoulder recovers as expected and some of the changes Ducati plans for the Estoril test pay off, it isn’t unreasonable to expect Rossi to be winning races later in the season just as Stoner managed in 2010.
Could Valentino still hold out any hope of a title challenge this year? The gut reaction says no, but it is certainly numerically possible. Thanks to his ill conceived passing maneuver at Jerez, the points race is pretty tight with Rossi only 25 points behind Lorenzo. Stoner went on last year to win 3 races but was marred by more crashes and some poor results. My feeling is that the winner of the championship this year might need to be on the podium at almost every race just like a certain Mr Lorenzo managed last year.
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