Marco Bezzecchi
Marc Marquez has made a habit of crushing his teammates in MotoGP. It’s one of the clearest demonstrations of his greatness.
As a rookie, Marquez fought with fellow Honda rider Dani Pedrosa and Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo for the title until the final race, where he prevailed. But Pedrosa struggled to get close after that.
Over their remaining five seasons as a partnership, Marquez outscored Pedrosa by an average of 111 points. Three-time MotoGP champion Lorenzo joined in 2019 but languished in the midfield as the #93 romped to the title.
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More recently, Marquez thrashed Francesco Bagnaia by 257 points despite missing the last four rounds through injury. In the Spaniard’s hands, Ducati’s GP25 looked like one of the greatest bikes ever, but in Bagnaia’s, it was extremely inconsistent.
Jorge Lorenzo couldn’t compete with Marc Marquez’s ‘confidence’ at Honda
Speaking to DAZN earlier this year, Lorenzo said there was little ‘tension’ in the Honda garage in 2019 because the two riders weren’t in direct competition. That partnership promised fireworks but ended up being a footnote in the history books.
Lorenzo studied Marquez’s telemetry and tried to use the same techniques to close the significant gap, but he simply lacked the same ‘understanding’ of the Honda.
Bagnaia said in 2025 that Marquez could be fast on a ‘tractor’, suggesting there’s little use in trying to replicate his riding style.
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“My relationship with Marc in 2019 was very different from the one we had for five or six years, when we weren’t teammates,” Lorenzo said. “There was a lot of tension, especially in 2013, when he started as a rookie and was a bit oblivious to those battles we had.
“In Jerez he knocked me off the track on that last corner. I complained a lot, also through the press, about his riding style. There was a lot of tension.
“He was at his peak, he had his best season, and I was much slower than him. So, that makes the relationship better, since he doesn’t see the other rider as a big threat.
“I couldn’t get close to Marc. I tried to see his telemetry, I tried to copy him as much as possible, but it was impossible. He had such confidence with that Honda and understood it so well… I tried to do the same, but it was impossible.”
Jorge Lorenzo thinks he could have won a fourth championship in the 2020s
Lorenzo knew he was in trouble at Honda from his first test. He felt relatively comfortable on the 2018 bike but felt the 2019 model was a step in the wrong direction.
A serious injury at Assen, combined with his general underperformance, prompted him to retire at the end of the year.
However, Lorenzo thinks he could have won another title when Marquez was injured, had he stayed with Ducati.
Andrea Dovizioso was Marquez’s nearest challenger at the end of the decade, when the Borgo Panigale outfit started as a serious force.
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