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batsplat · 4 days

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kind of recently clocked that marc took caseys honda seat coming into 2013 (not saying he didn’t deserve a factory seat immediately bc he obviously did, kid went and podiumed his first and won his second ever race on that bike but it somehow never crossed my mind and it’s kind of insane to imagine now that a rookie would get it) and i was wondering if there was something To Know about that mid to end 2012 season, about vale back to yamaha and casey retiring and casey and danis teammateship and how dani reacted to marc getting that seat etc i love love love your rambles so if you got thoughts please share?

y'know what. let's do this one with bullet points

at the start of 2012, retirement rumours were swirling around two riders. one was casey stoner.... the other was valentino rossi

valentino was entering year two of a miserable stint at ducati, trapped on a bike that was *checks notes* shit and that was still several years away from making the kinds of improvements that could make it championship-winning machinery in anyone's hands (remember, even casey wasn't anywhere close to fighting for the title in 2010). it had also been a rough couple of years injury-wise for valentino, with 2010 bringing the shoulder injury courtesy of a motocross accident, followed by him breaking the leg at mugello. the painful shoulder problems persisted even upon his return from the leg injury, not exactly helped by his decision to delay shoulder surgery until the end of the year, and he remained hampered in 2011 while he was trying to adapt to the new bike

probably the main reason for the retirement rumours, however, was the death of simoncelli in an accident valentino had been involved in. the rumours basically started the day after the accident, and did not stop even when he showed up at valencia and raced (for about one corner until he was caught up in an ugly multi-rider pile up... kinda set off by dovi but anyways)

the rumours persisted in 2012. valentino became increasingly irritable about them.... meant that both valentino and casey were going into round three at estoril having to address the retirement talk. casey denied that he was planning to retire in the estoril pre-event presser (and he'd already kinda hinted to honda he was ready to sign a new contract)

this all led to some pretty silly drama, where the journalists were less than impressed when casey did announce his retirement two weeks later at le mans and casey went 'well I hadn't decided to retire yet back then!'

anyway, more important is the retirement announcement itself. casey made a statement at the very start of the le mans presser. here's the text:

he was the championship leader at this point, and the favourite to defend his title. of course he took a bunch of questions at the presser about the announcement, and cited several other reasons for his decision to retire, like people's reactions to his mystery illness in 2009, or too many people criticising the current racing being boring, or how they let CRT riders into parc fermé (let's not get into that)

now it's important to note that this was round four. which meant that the entire rider market was about to be spiced up... so let's backtrack a bit and talk silly season: historical edition!

okay, so marc could have feasibly moved up to motogp a year earlier, and for a large chunk of 2011 there was pretty frenzied speculation he was going to do exactly that. in october, between the phillip island and sepang rounds (where he had the crash that gave him diplopia and prematurely ended both his season and his championship bid), he finally announced he was going to stay in moto2

so, in late 2011, speculation was already of course starting for what the grid would look like in 2013, with a lot of big name contracts expiring at the end of 2012. both factory yamahas, hondas, ducatis, amongst others... you know how it goes. the expectation was broadly that casey would stick with honda and dani would be protected for at least another year by the rookie rule (more on that in a second), that jorge would stick with yamaha and... well. at this point, it was plausible valentino might sign at least a one year contract extension with ducati, with just enough glimmers of progress and signs that things might be headed in the right direction for him to want to continue building that project up

early 2012, around the time of the first race, and actually it's looking plausible that none of the six big factory seats are going to be changing hands. jorge and casey seemed the most certain ones, valentino too committed to ducati, and dani likely to sign a one year deal until marc swoops in at the end of 2013 to take his place

then casey announces his retirement, and silly season properly kicks off

first order of priority is of course the vacant repsol honda seat. now, the main thing stopping marc from getting that repsol honda seat was never actually going to be a lack of space - it was the 'rookie rule'. in 2010, a rule was introduced to stop rookies from joining the factory team. the idea was basically to help out satellite teams by giving them the chance to house a young star rider, give them publicity and results and so on (face it, how much would any of us be talking about tech3 this year without the pedro acosta factor?)

this was likely never to really work like it was supposed to, because if you're one of the factories, you can basically set up... teams that are only very theoretically 'independent'. another factory team in all but name. remember how valentino technically won his first title at a satellite team? well, that was essentially a shell team set up as a way to have somewhere to put valentino for two years while repsol honda was full. not the same team (and indeed, valentino and jb did sometimes look over at the chaos at repsol and go. good lord. what's going on there) but full factory support

in spring 2012, dorna was still adamant this rule would remain in place:

should also help explain why the general reaction to suzuki suddenly pulling out in 2022 was 'shocked but not that shocked' lol

but of course by mid-2012 this rule was facing another serious test: where do you put marc marquez, especially with this vacant repsol honda seat just sitting there? now, the valentino model did seem like a reasonable one in this situation, where you put him into an existing satellite team with heavy factory backing or even just create a new one to house him. which is something valentino himself talked about:

except, it wasn't quite that straightforward, because from 2013 onward manufacturers were limited to supplying bikes for four riders, two in a factory team and two in satellites - so you'd have to take away one of the bikes from the existing two honda satellite teams, gresini or lcr

one of the reasons why putting him in one of the existing satellite teams was a bit of an issue was that he was already backed by repsol, which could have caused sponsorship conflicts if he'd been housed with one of those other teams. but also, by this point ezpeleta was sounding rather less committed to the whole thing. from june 2012:

which.

my man

if you KNOW that the most prominent rookies can be put into shell satellites anyway and you are openly joking about it then WHAT was the POINT of any of this

by the end of the month, they gave up on the whole thing. as it happens, it wasn't even repsol honda who asked for the rule to be dropped - it was the satellite honda teams who were like 'yeah we don't actually want this kid for our team, way too stressful to make this all work for a single year before losing him anyway'

not a universally popular decision, it has to be said

it's quite likely that if casey had stayed and the rookie rule had still been dropped that hrc would have immediately taken in marc and not renewed dani's contract, which would have been a wee bit awkward given dani's late season form, but. you know. so it goes. anyway honda didn't end up having to make any tough calls

about two weeks after the rookie rule is dropped, hrc announces the two year contract with marc

by this point, valentino has had another miserable start to the season with ducati, save for a fun little wet podium at le mans - you know, the race where casey announced his retirement... they had their last ever duel there, with valentino snatching second place from casey on the last lap

photo abbove not representative of the general tone they used to discuss each other in that time period

anyhow, these rare bright spots weren't going to be enough for valentino

"There was a lot of expectation from me and from Ducati to win, but unfortunately I didn't have a good feeling with the bike, especially with the front," he said some years later. "When you are in that situation it's very difficult because you lose motivation and you lose the joy of going racing. When you start the weekend you are already in a negative way, so it's difficult, because if you don't have fun on the bike everything becomes heavier: leaving your home, all the travelling, speaking with journalists, everything. Also it becomes difficult to sleep. You are in a tunnel. When I was with Ducati I thought about stopping many times, but in the end it was a very good decision not to give up. Because if you stop and you don't have a bike then it's very easy to find yourself out of the business." - from Oxley's 'Valentino Rossi: All His Races'

he began openly talking about a return to yamaha in 2012 to replace the underperforming ben spies (though as late as july, publicly he was still talking up the chances of him sticking with ducati)... which was not a prospect welcomed by all in the factory - who saw his initial move to ducati as displaying a lack of loyalty. there was also of course the issue of yamaha wanting to avoid a repeat in the dramatics with jorge, which was certainly a topic in the negotiations. valentino's new deal with yamaha was eventually announced in august

so yes, obviously pretty qualified enthusiasm from jorge's side. it helped that it was made clear that, at the start of 2013, this was very much jorge's team, something which valentino had to work to change as a result of his level of performance (after 2013)

which left dovi to take the ducati factory seat. though he too maybe had to do a little bit of... smoothing over past comments in the negotiation process:

and that's that! there was a brief period in which honda and valentino rumours were a thing... always unlikely, given the long-standing mutual animosity there, and valentino claims he was never in contact with them. dani's contract was signed when marc's was, so that put an end to that. there was also serious speculation jorge would take casey's seat at honda, which was ended by him signing for another two years at yamaha in june. everyone sorted

dani and casey had a pretty cordial teammate relationship - though of course by this point it was already no longer really a team organised around dani as it had been in the late noughties. from late 2011 (shortly before simoncelli's passing):

and from the mind games post:

he also says the following in that passage: "some days [dani] beat us but to be honest I always felt like I had the measure of him over the course of a season"

more to be said about that relationship, of course, but it was basically harmonious on both sides, and they parted on good terms. as for dani's response to marc's signing, it wasn't like he was in a place within the team to complain too much - though his position was strengthened by his late 2012 form, where he won six of the last eight races. both of them mostly just stick to saying the standard respectful pr stuff about each other

though this is pretty funny in retrospect: