Change of thinking for Casey Stoner after frustration at MotoGP knowledge sharing

Casey Stoner has been retired from MotoGP for almost 15 years, but his assistance to current riders has gone underappreciated, he feels.

The Australian has taken on testing roles in the past, but more recently he has been seen in the garages of some riders, perhaps most notably Francesco Bagnaia, offering advice and sharing the knowledge he has of fighting at the front of MotoGP from his own career, which ended in 2012.

Stoner has been largely absent from MotoGP this year, perhaps in part due to the back surgery he had in the spring to relieve pain he’d felt since a crash in 2003 when he was racing in the 125cc class.

He headed over to Europe recently, though, for the World Ducati Week and Goodwood Festival of Speed events, where he was a part of Ducati’s centenary celebrations as a landmark rider in the Bologna company’s history having won its first MotoGP title in 2007.

At World Ducati Week Stoner was publicly thanked by the aforementioned Bagnaia – who will leave Ducati for Aprilia at the end of 2026 – for the help and advice Stoner had given him in recent years, the Italian having become MotoGP champion twice with Ducati, in 2022 and 2023.

But Stoner believes his efforts to help riders have not received adequate appreciation, and the Australian has vowed to not give away his knowledge “for nothing” in the future.

“I miss it, but I've given too much of myself and many times I haven't gotten the responses I expected in return,” Casey Stoner told Italian publication GPOne at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

“It seems there is no gratification when you do things like this. 

“It was a great honor for me to hear Pecco [Francesco Bagnaia] thanking me for this and I did it for no reason other than to help him. 

“But I won't do anything else for nothing in the future. I won't give away my knowledge for nothing. 

“Unfortunately, I have done it too many times in the past, and they simply move on from you once they have your knowledge and make you disappear. 

“I won't make the same mistake again, I won't help without reason and I won't do it for nothing. That's the main reason for me.”