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Numbers in themselves are cold, but there are some that are capable of warming the spirits, especially those of the fans. Such is the case of a statistic pitting Stoner against Bagnaia, the only two riders to have managed to win the title in MotoGP with Ducati. After the Silverstone Grand Prix, Pecco has participated in 67 races with the Rossa, the same number as Casey, who was at Borgo Panigale from 2007 to 2010.
There is a lot of curiosity to compare (at least from a distance) the two champions and the result is not so obvious because the Italian, in the same time period, beats the Australian by numbers. In fact, Bagnaia has won 24 races against Stoner's 23, achieved the same number of podiums (42) and twice as many world titles (2 against 1), while Casey takes revenge in the poles: 21 against 19.
These are the figures, which caused the fans to riot: "How can you compare Stoner to Bagnaia?" they cried out for the crime of lese majesty. It is also to be said that it is Bagnaia who is the first to shrug off any parallels with Casey when teased: "It is not fair to compare me to Stoner because he got those victories in fewer years than me, his percentage is higher," he told us in Assen in all humility.
Distance comparisons, after all, leave the time of day, especially when almost two decades pass between the exploits of one and the other rider. Stoner arrived at Ducati at a particular time, in the year of the transition to 800 cc engines, and won immediately. He debuted in Qatar and then 9 more times, dominating the championship, with a 6th place as his worst result that year. He did this at a time when other riders failed to adapt to the Desmosedici: Capirossi won only one race and finished 7th in the championship (with less than half of Casey's points), Barros was 10th, Hofmann 13th. The legend of the Werekangaroo grew in the following seasons, when others could not get their heads around the D16, while he was flying: in 2008 he won 6 GPs and was 2nd in the World Championship, 4 wins and 4th place in 2009, same final position in 2010 with 3 wins. Through it all, first Melandri and then Hayden were picking up little or nothing. Then came Valentino, who wondered how Stoner could ride (or win with) that bike.
Bagnaia, on the other hand, arrived at Borgo Panigale in 2019, in the Pramac team and with an unupdated bike. It took him 21 races to get on the podium, two and a half years to win, when he had already been promoted to the factory team: 4 wins in 2021, 7 in 2022 and 2023, 6 this year. Pecco was a diesel, it took him a long time to warm up but then he never stopped. His percentage of races won in MotoGP is 36%, but if we calculate it from the first win to the last race it goes up to almost 67%. In addition, Bagnaia is the only Ducati rider to have managed to win 4 consecutive races (Stoner stopped at 3): he did it twice, in 2022 and this season.
"Yes, but Bagnaia has a missile, Stoner had a wreck," one retorts, logically exaggerating. Certainly Preziosi's Ducati is very different from Dall'Igna's. In the Australian's years there was talk of the Italian David against the Japanese Goliaths, while today the situation is reversed. The Desmosedicis on the track are many and all fast. Credit to the engineer from the Veneto, the teams and the riders, who have taken the Bolognese bike to the top of the world.
A bike, however, does not win on its own and, in fact, before Bagnaia, the title had only been touched, by Dovizioso. Pecco found himself a (nearly) perfect bike, but he was also the only one who knew how to interpret it at its best. In recent years, everyone (or almost everyone) has won with the Ducati: Bastianini, Miller, Bezzecchi, Martin, Di Giannantonio, Zarco, but no one has had the decisive kick.
On the 800 cc Desmosedici, however, only Stoner won. Having the best bike of the lot, however, is not a fault, and it has happened to virtually every champion: from Agostini to Rossi, via Marquez and Doohan. Champions are also lucky and being in the right place at the right time is their prerogative.
So what? So numbers can also be fun as well as cool, because they bring back the past, they revive the exploits of times past, they spark debates and discussions. Stoner was the best in those years, Bagnaia is in these, and that's all the statistics say. Then there is the pleasant chatter around the coffee table (or given the season, under the beach umbrella) as we try to while away the waiting time that separates us from the next race and the birth of the next champion.
