Casey Stoner's Retirement Announcement

Here's Casey Stoner's retirement annoucement verbatim. Yes, he's only 26 years old ... I guess he was on the "Freedom 26" retirement investment plan. Why didn't I think of that?

“Afternoon everyone.”

“Basically, this has come after a long time of thinking, a lot of time talking with my family and my wife. This has been coming for a couple of years now, but at the end of this 2012 season, I will be not racing in the 2013 championship. I will be finishing my career at the end of this season in MotoGP and go forward with something different with my life.”

“After so many years of doing the sport which I love, and which myself and my family made so many sacrifices for, after so many years of trying to get to where we have gotten to and this point. This sport has changed a lot, and it’s changed to the point that I’m not enjoying it, I don’t have the passion for it. So at this time, it’s better if I retire now. There’s a lot of things that have disappointed me and also a lot of things that I have loved about this sport, but unfortunately, the balance has gone in the wrong direction, and so basically I won’t be continuing any more. It would be nice if I could say that I will stay for just one more year, but then when does it stop? So we decided to finish everything as we are now.”


This is bound to have some impact on his performance over the rest of the season. How can he be motivated after comments like that? Seems to me he may have run into the same Honda corporate attitude that turned Rossi over to Yamaha. There's bound to be a book about this once he's off-contract ... will make an interesting read. I wonder if Simoncelli's crash last year increased pressure from family members to find a safer line of work. Anyway ... seems to me this is a boost to the Lorenzo camp. I would think that the only motivation left in Stoner might be to win the home round at Phillip Island at the end of the season to sign off in style.