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The run in between Valentino Rossi and Casey Stoner last weekend at the Spanish GP of Jerez is just the latest altercation between the two antagonists. When did it all go ballistic between the two GP titans? Hard to say, but the infamous off-track pass at Laguna Seca in 2008 would be an easy guess as to when the pair served notice that it's on between them.
Without taking into consideration the easily identifiable sub plots between the two—Rossi on a Ducati, Stoner's Honda crew made up of several key ex-Ducati men—what's clear is that Stoner and Rossi just don't like one another.
This is not well-hidden or PR smothered dislike like the relationship between Jorge Lorenzo and Rossi while the pair were at Yamaha, where they "played nice" in public but would rather spit (or worse) in the others food behind scenes.
I've interviewed them both, one-on-one. Stoner, to me, seemed more like Mat Mladin than even Mladin was. In that I mean Mat's public persona was very different from his private one, and while his standoffish reputation was well known, man to man he could be quite reasonable. Stoner, though, remains the only rider I've interviewed where I sensed if I asked a question he didn't appreciate he was going to knock the recorder out of my hand, and wasn't going to stop there, in all probability.
Stoner has never been a Rossi fan. For example, he's never, to my knowledge, stated that just racing against a rider many consider the best of the best (Rossi) is gratifying enough, as some of Rossi's other rivals have said or inferred at different times. Stoner doesn't care for Rossi, because from his view Rossi has enjoyed a red carpet of officiating, opportunity and pure, blind good luck in his career. Stoner slept in a grungy sleeping bag in a run down camper with Chaz Davies when they were young GP riders. One gets the impression from talking to him that that the "Rossi thing" is sort of like a poverty-stricken kid seeing a high school rival driving a new Porsche. That sort of upbringing does not breed respect for someone you consider the "belle of the ball", even before one factors in the semi-typical fight or fight Australian reaction to tense situations.
Rossi adheres to the Troy Corser adage of 'respect all fear none'. If there is a real-world manual on how to go racing, assuredly there is a paragraph detailing how there is only one reason to go to an Australian's garage after a race, and it's not for a mea culpa. But that Rossi went there and endured Stoner's backhanded acceptance of his apologies is interesting, because if the past is any indication one might have expected Rossi to make a thinly veiled comment about Stoner not yielding the racing line because it was clear he could not hang with the fast crowd, or insert your own verbiage.
Good racing is unfortunately built on a foundation of contempt, if not outright hatred.
This is going to be good.
ENDS
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