Casey Stoner during the 2013 Super2 series
Triple-eight supremo Roland Dane believes Casey Stoner only needed one more season to make serious progress on his high-profile journey into supercars.
Stoner retired from MotoGP competition as a two-time world champion in late 2012.
As early as the next year he went on a Supercars trip with Triple Eight and represented the Brisbane squad in the secondary Super2 series.
After a season in which he finished 18th place with a fifth place on the Queensland Raceway, Stoner left the Supercars feeder series and has since operated only limited professional races of any kind.
Dane is confident that if their partnership continues, success is imminent.
“There is no doubt that I believe Casey could have become a top rider if he had stayed with it and got used to the fact that our tracks are so different and that street courses come with them and all of the trials and ‘difficulties that come with them and learn how to drive a car, ”Dane said on the latest Parked Up podcast.
Urged by how far Stoner was from this level, Dane replied, “I’m not sure that’s the real answer.
“I don’t know, but I think if he’d done another year of Super2, returned to the racetracks and so on, the speed he showed would have translated into results.”
The question arose as part of a discussion about how the two-time Dakar Rally winner Toby Price would fare in a supercar.
Dane wasn’t overly optimistic given the vastly different skill set between supercars and off-road motorcycle racing, but realized that there would be a surefire way to find out.
“What he should probably do is if he wants to find out where he really is, get an appearance in a Super3 or even a Porsche Cup car and see where he is,” he said.
“He should go to Paul Morris because I think you’ll see Nash in a Super2 car next year and Paul has a pretty good Super3 car there so maybe he should be in control of it.”
