2007 MotoGP World Championship: Casey Stoner - Unlikely Hero

On the evening after last year's penultimate Portuguese Grand Prix, away from the media frenzy covering the Pedrosa/Hayden debacle that nearly decided the '06 MotoGP World Championship, events were unfolding that would have a profound effect on the '07 title chase-and possibly many more to come.

Spaniard Sete Gibernau was playing hardball during contract negotiations with Marlboro Ducati over a few hundred thousand dollars. He'd won nine premier class races in his 10-year career, but none since '04. And Gibernau was damaged goods; he re-broke his collarbone in the horrific Turn One crash in Barcelona early in the year, and it colored the rest of his season.

Nicky Hayden had a Ducati contract in his hand in Phillip Island with a number that was much bigger-by at least $1 million-than anything Honda offered, but he chose to stay with the Japanese factory. Young, Italian hotshoe Marco Melandri initially accepted Ducati's offer, only to see his Honda team owner Fausto Gresini match it, thus keeping Melandri on his team.

But Ducati Corse MotoGP team boss Livio Suppo had a fourth option. The urbane Italian had talked to a young Casey Stoner back in '05, and again at the beginning of the '06 season, but both parties admittedly were looking to end up elsewhere. The timing was critical; when Ducati called Gibernau's bluff, Stoner was on the verge of re-signing with Lucio Cecchinello's underfunded LCR Honda team when he eventually signed with Ducati. In a matter of days, he went from being a luckless satellite team rider to a factory star.

"It looked like we were going to be signing with Lucio again, which was personally a little bit disappointing because we were going to be riding the same bike we had that year, with the same problems," Stoner said. "Finally, I had the opportunity with Ducati that I just jumped at. And it's been the perfect win-win situation for the both of us." Enough that Ducati exercised its contract option on Stoner immediately after the USGP, re-signing the 21-year-old Australian for the '08 season.

Suppo initially thought he had a diamond in the rough. The first pre-season prototype test results were encouraging, but then Stoner and teammate Loris Capirossi struggled with the earliest version of the Desmosedici GP7-specifically the electronics.

"The early trouble we had was just the fact that it was a new system," Stoner remembered. "The bike...was just working really well [in the Valencia pre-season test]. We didn't have any problems. I was just getting comfortable with the bike. But then we changed to a new electronics system, and we really struggled to get it sorted. It took us about three tests to do it, which was a good eight, nine days. By the time I got around to the first race, which I suppose is the crunch time, then it worked perfectly."

The first race of the '07 season was in the desert kingdom of Qatar, where Stoner had been a revelation in '06. Denied boarding on his connecting flight that year, Stoner spent Thursday night on a bench in the Dubai airport; he arrived at the track as practice was starting on Friday morning, fortified on Red Bull and chocolate and suffering from the flu. He took the pole position in qualifying and led the first 10 of 22 laps before being passed by eventual race-winner Valentino Rossi.

This year there would be no pass by Rossi. On a motorcycle that was clearly the fastest on the track, Stoner led from start to finish to record his first MotoGP win in his first race for Ducati. Then he did it again in Turkey, China, Catalunya, the United Kingdom and Laguna Seca.

"Who the hell thought Casey was that fast?" Suppo asked. "So far not one mistake. So far Casey has been the perfect rider. To work with him is a dream." Surely this is the case for Stoner as well.