Neil Hodgson pinpoints the one area where Casey Stoner was ‘better’ than Marc Marquez

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Marc Marquez is already making a case to be considered the greatest Ducati rider ever. He’s not world champion just yet, but it feels like a formality.

Marquez’s victory at the Czech Grand Prix last weekend was his eighth in Ducati red. He’s achieved that feat (along with 11 Sprint wins) in just 12 starts.

120 points clear of his brother Alex on the satellite Gresini, he’s destined to put the Borgo Panigale outfit back on top after Pramac’s Jorge Martin defeated Francesco Bagnaia on the GP24. Bagnaia, champion in 2022 and 2023, had ended a 15-year drought stretching back to the days of Casey Stoner.

Stoner won 10 out of 18 races in 2007 to blitz a field that included Dani Pedrosa and Valentino Rossi. Runner-up to Rossi a year later, he stayed with the brand until 2010, before finishing his career at Honda.

Casey Stoner could find the limit even quicker than Marc Marquez, says Neil Hodgson

Stoner added another title to his cabinet in 2011, a year before his abrupt retirement. The Australian was only 27 when he walked away from the sport.

By contrast, Marquez is hoping to become the oldest MotoGP champion ever at 32 and displace Rossi. He won the first of his titles in 2013, proving to be a dream successor to Stoner.

Speaking on TNT Sports’ coverage from Brno, pundit Neil Hodgson highlighted a similarity between the two riders. Both are able to find the ‘limit’ of a motorcycle almost immediately – long before their rivals.

Stoner would work out how much he could push ‘slightly quicker’ than Marquez. He’d even take risks on outlaps, which was surprisingly helpful to his engineers.

“Marc’s got an ability to go to his limit, the limit much quicker,” Hodgson said. “A lot of other riders, and it’s normal, it takes them a session or two to get to that point where that’s the limit. Marc’s able to do that within a couple of laps.

“And then, from that moment on after two laps, every lap he does is around that lap time, so his feeling from the motorcycle, his feedback to his crew chief at the end of the session is more accurate, because you are at that limit.

On Stoner, he added: “You’d be watching an out lap thinking, ‘What’s he doing?’. He feels it after one lap. He doesn’t understand that normal people, and I’m talking about the best riders in the world, it takes them six laps, 10 laps sometimes to get to that limit.

“Casey was better than Marc Marquez at that one lap. Marquez was obviously ridiculously quick at getting to his limit, but Casey was slightly quicker.”

Marc Marquez’s admiration for Casey Stoner is abundantly clear

Stoner once claimed that Marquez felt ‘threatened’ by him, but the Spaniard is clearly a huge admirer.

Indeed, Marquez pored over Stoner’s data when he first joined Honda. Many feel the two riders are alike in their aggression.

As he revealed in an interview this month, Marquez wishes he could have followed Stoner. MotoGP fans would surely have relished a battle between the two.

Stoner remains the last rider born outside Europe to win the premier-class title. Since 2011, all but one championship has been split between Spain and Italy.