#yayy casey ask keep em coming

[batsplat]

Wait what's this about Casey, Marc and getting kicked out of honda

ah just a fun bit of old gossip. to clarify in case the phrasing in this post was confusing, we're talking about casey's role as a test rider with honda after his retirement, so 2013-15 (not casey's initial retirement from his honda ride, which was ofc entirely his own choice)

so! first of all! from the moment casey retired, everybody was going 'when will casey be back'. this wasn't based on anything casey was actually saying - it's just how people are about retirement announcements ig, the disbelief at how early casey retired, wanting to see him race again, refusing to believe he might actually properly be done. when the riders were asked about it in pressers, they usually gave very neutral 'sure that would be nice' responses. when casey was asked about it, he was generally pretty firm in going 'I'm not interested' and also 'stop asking'. but in 2015, dani made the decision to pause his season to get an operation for his recurring severe arm pump issues. he ended up missing three races, and inevitably people went, 'hey you know who would be fun to have back for a few races, you know who also happens to be familiar with the honda bike'

and this time casey WOULD have been up for it. except, according to him, SOMEONE didn't want him to race:

now fwiw, we have zero proof that this 'someone' was marc, although ofc that was something people speculated about at the time - the idea being that marc wouldn't have wanted to be undermined by casey outperforming him, especially in the context of a tricky start to the 2015 season. (funnily enough, the phrasing does echo the "somebody inside Yamaha didn't want me there" thing; a topic for another post but I'm pretty unconvinced valentino was involved in blocking casey's yamaha deal.) and... given this is the same interview where casey talks about his belief that marc forced him out of honda (which we'll get to)... I mean, he must have at least known it's a conclusion people would draw

marc was asked in pressers about casey racing as dani's replacement, and he basically stuck to 'it's not up to me'. some more casey quotes:

I like to think 'I would've won that' was one of casey's main takeaways from sepang 2015

anyway at the end of 2015, casey left honda to join ducati as a test rider. here is an excerpt from a piece about it at the time, saying marc had complained about casey's performance level as a test rider:

you'll note the HRC sources disagree with casey on how good casey's pace was; unfortunately we'll never really know either way. (in any case it's not particularly great form for sources to 'let slip' that your test rider's pace is poor, even if it was true, but there we are.) and ofc there's the assertion that marc felt 'threatened' by casey and/or didn't think casey's feedback was valuable. here's a screenshot of the piece from speedweek being referenced:

again, a lot of this is obviously hearsay. we don't really know how hard marc pushed to get rid of casey (if at all), and certainly not for what reasons - whether it was casey being too slow or the quality of his feedback or marc's ego or whatever else. we do know casey thinks marc wanted him out because marc felt threatened by him, as he's very helpfully said as much:

casey does make it clear he doesn't have any proof that marc (and his entourage) felt threatened by him, but, well. either way he did believe it. this story dropped in january 2016 btw, so at a time where press coverage of marc was not exactly at its friendliest anyway. marc hasn't really ever responded to these assertions afaik - but when casey ended up leaving ducati again at the end of 2018, he was pretty lukewarm about the idea of casey returning to honda:

here too there's nothing from marc's side to suggest any real antipathy, but of course we also don't know whether he's being honest about his reasons for preferring the distinctly unthreatening bradl. and finally, casey has more recently (aka start of this year, 2024) said that he left honda because they only listened to marc:

which is also obviously relevant now in the context of honda's long-term decline and marc's decision to leave (criticised in some quarters by those who feel marc is at least partly to blame for said decline)

anyway ofc this is all very he said she said, so who knows what really happened - but the fun bit is that nobody can quite agree! all a bit messy isn't it. it's very low stakes beef, kinda nice... but it does also fit in with casey's whole outlook towards the sport, where he often feels like he's being unfairly treated. and (this cannot be stressed enough) a lot of the time he was right, he was being unfairly treated, so it's absolutely possible some underhanded stuff was going on here too. believe what you will! who knows!