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You're missing the point doohanfan..

The only own-fault, non-scoring race crash Rossi had 2011 was at P.I. in greasy conditions, if I remember right.

In 2010 Stoner fell off Five times early in the race, over riding the bike. He did it twice in a row immediately after Laguna 08.  

As a consequence of having to get heat into the tyres, the only way to ride it was flat-out from the start?

You wouldn't be making excuses now would you? He still crashed..Perhaps he should have known better?

As for Stoner easing off and crashing..give me an example? Pure fanboy folklore.

Checchinello reckons it runs deeper than just the Ducati. It was born out of early sprint races as a kid in Oz and became almost part of his racing psyche.

Casey's early pace out the box was legendary and had his rivals baffled..are you telling me we haven't seen Stoner translate that to races?

It's the way he went about his business AND it had it's perils.

Lorenzo understands the added risk to a championship this can bring. Dani talked about starting his season too slowly for similar reasons.

The idea is to win..yes. But this IS a team sport. There is considerable investment and kudos at stake.

Sometimes you have to ride for points.

More manure than a Texas rodeo paddock from Wosi

So you didn't watch, for instance, L.S 2011 Wosi? Where Stoner held back quietly until more than half distance and then stalked and shot down first Pedrosa and then Lorenzo, the two other riders with any chance of winning? Or Assen 2012, the closest finish in the history of the 800s?

Let me give you a little history, Wosi. 

"This left the front group, which by then had been caught by Pedrosa, to slug it out for the lead. The Hondas of Melandri, Pedrosa, Hayden and Stoner were all evenly matched, and the positions they held depended on who got through Turn 1 fastest, and who could brake into Turn 12 hardest.

For the next 5 laps, Nicky Hayden, Dani Pedrosa, Marco Melandri and Casey Stoner were engaged in an epic battle for the lead. Although Pedrosa led for much of this time, he could never get away, as each time he managed to get a small gap, he would be chased down by Hayden, and lose time having to block his HRC team mate, giving Melandri and Stoner a chance to catch back up, and get in each other's way as they swapped places out of Turn 11 and into Turn 12. But by lap 18, this epic struggle was taking its toll on Hayden's tire, as he started to lose touch after running wide as he was passed by Melandri.

And then there were three. After passing Hayden, Melandri got a great run out of the blazingly fast Turn 11, allowing him to out-brake Pedrosa into the Turn 12 to 14 Tilke Twiddles. This move also allowed Stoner to close up on Pedrosa, and pass him on the finish straight at the start of lap 18. By the end of the lap, the young Australian had passed Melandri as well to take the lead.

For the next 3 laps, it looked as if Stoner was going to equal Freddie Spencer's record as the youngest GP winner ever, being exactly the same age, to the day, as Spencer was when he won in Spa Francorchamps in 1983. Stoner on the LCR Honda had gained a little gap on Melandri and Pedrosa bogged themselves down in the scrap for second place. But this dispute was settled over the course of the penultimate lap. Pedrosa attempted to force his Repsol HRC Honda in front of Melandri going into Turn 12, but almost out-braked himself, running wide and letting Melandri get a gap. In a last ditch attempt to catch the Italian, Pedrosa flung his Honda into the downhill Turn 1, losing the front end and sliding off into the gravel.

This freed Melandri to concentrate on catching Stoner over less than the lap that was left. He looked like he wasn't close enough into Turn 9 and 10, and hadn't gained significantly through Turn 11, but in a masterful display of gutsy braking, he nudged his Honda ahead of Stoner's braking into Turn 12, while keeping the door firmly closed through the "Tilke Twiddles", and taking a hard-fought but richly deserved win. Stoner took second just a fraction behind, while Hayden hung on to his sliding bike to clinch a crucial third place, making it an impressive three podiums in a row for the Kentucky Kid."

Istanbul 2006. Stoner's third-ever motoGp race, his team's third-ever motoGp race, on a hand-me-down Honda running whatever MIchelins were left in the truck after the senior teams had picked over the best.  Vs. the two HRC team Hondas, that you may remember did rather well in the WC that year..

missing the point

No, you are missing the point wosi.

Carlo pernat, loris capirossi's manager and hence perhaps in a position to have a fairly nuanced view on the ducati, certainly more so than me or even you, said  directly that he had been mistaken in believing stoner's crashes on the ducati were due to poor racecraft or riding errors, and said they were down to the flawed ducati bike. Rossi did directly say that the front on the 2011 ducati gave way  randomly and without warning; he and burgess, acknowledged as the best development team in history, eventually managed to solve this problem, but never found a way to make the thing go competitively fast in the dry with rossi riding it. All the evidence is that stoner at all times massively out-performed the capacity of the ducati in the hands of any other rider, particularly in 2010 when by ducati's own account the bike was not developed by or for  him. As has been pointed out, stoner did rather better on the 2010 ducati than rossi on the 2011 bike.

I am amazed at the persistence of those of your ilk in the face of having been proven wrong on nearly every point; I believe this is known colloquially as carping .  I recall voluminous condemnation of stoner's development skills yet your genius development team with much greater resources went exactly nowhere with the bike. The last bike developed by stoner, the 2009 bike, had no random front end loses btw, and he managed both a faster race time and  a better fastest lap in winning the 2009 qatar race than your boy managed when he won in 2010, or finished 7th in 2011, despite you apparently seeing such great significance in said fastest lap in 2011. 

As I have said, I will accept criticism of his racecraft in the 2012 sachsenring race and the following race at mugello. Even the great valentino has had the occasional bad race, particularly the season deciding last race in 2006, but I think stoner's focus in 2012 was not what it could have been having contemplated then decided on retirement, no-one's problem other than his of course. I had previously agreed that the 2 crashes post laguna seca 2008 were the result of pressure, but win it or bin it was not such a stupid strategy then, with the points situation and injuries to pedrosa and lorenzo mandating that stoner needed basically to win 6 of the 7 races to win the championship given how rossi was riding, which was superbly of course.  Stoner at the time maintained that the bike gave way on both occasions without warning, and the possibility exists that he was telling the truth and this was the first sign of the bridgestones no longer suiting the bike, as many (but not including him to my knowledge, he wasn't unlike some inclined to criticise companies to whom he was currently contracted) have maintained subsequently.

Hmmmm.....

"If Casey Stoner had tempered his natural instinct to ring a bike's neck, to step beyond the laws that bind physics..would he have won more titles?"

.....Given the choice, I'd stick with the edge of the seat Stoner I've enjoyed over the last few years.......Even if it turns out he ONLY wins 2 titles....

No-one is saying

that stoner had no faults as a rider, and I personally am not saying he is as good overall as rossi, although he did fairly well in that part of their respective careers which overlapped.

I think he could have won the 2012 championship and didn't. I think it is virtually impossible for him to have done significantly better than he did with ducati, perhaps other than if he had not been taken ill in 2009, but not by riding differently.