Critics helped me, says Stoner

Fresh from dominating pre-season testing, Casey Stoner will use criticism from key rival Valentino Rossi as motivation to defend his MotoGP world title.

Stoner said his second championship, on a Honda, was made more satisfying after the jibes he was subjected to when he was on board a Ducati.

The Australian has been the only rider with the ability to make the Ducati perform, winning his first world crown with it in 2007.

Last year, seven-times world champion Valentino Rossi was saddled with the Italian marque after switching from Yamaha and was left winless for the first time in his career.

Before he signed with Ducati, Rossi criticised Stoner at the end of the Australian’s last season on the bike in 2010, saying he had not pushed the machine hard enough.

And Rossi’s pit chief, Australian Jerry Burgess, said he could fix the Desmosedici’s handling problems in 80 seconds.

The glib remarks came back to haunt the pair as Burgess worked all year to try to fix the Ducati and Rossi struggled just to compete for podiums.

“The reason this (2011) championship does taste sweet has a lot to do with Valentino and Jerry and the criticism they gave us that we couldn’t develop a bike and didn’t know what we were doing,” Stoner told motorcyclenews.com.

“Clearly they are 10 times more confused than we ever were about what direction to go in.

“The whole thing with Valentino saying I hadn’t been pushing hard enough was nothing new.

“At one stage it was the Ducati was the best bike on the grid and I had the best tyres and everything else.

“This talk followed me and plagued me throughout my time at Ducati until finally Valentino got on the bike and showed that nothing different happened to when (Marco) Melandri got on the bike or Nicky (Hayden) got on it.”

Stoner said he was “100 per cent sure” that Rossi would not be any quicker on the bike than he had been.

“He complained about his shoulder injury at the start of the season but he got his best result with his shoulder injury,” Stoner said.

“As soon as his shoulder injury went he got worse. The excuses didn’t stop until the end of this season when they just had to start admitting that they didn’t know what direction to go.”

Jorge Lorenzo on a Yamaha was second quickest behind Stoner in the recent test at Sepang in Malaysia, while Rossi languished in fifth place.

Stoner is again poised to dominate the season, following up from a year in which he won 10 races, clinching the crown with his fifth successive win at the Australian Grand Prix in October.