Marco Bezzecchi
Marc Marquez has never been a saint. It’s in his racing DNA to be aggressive and mischievous on track, and it has been a winning formula.
Nowadays, he adopts a slightly different approach to MotoGP, but there are still flashes of the old Marc at times.
Since leaving Honda, he has stopped crashing as much, which has saved his already battered body from taking more hits.
Marquez was unfortunate to be tied up in a crash at the Indonesian Grand Prix last season, otherwise, he might have been in the best shape of his life.
Do you agree with Rossi’s verdict on the Sepang clash with Marquez?
Marquez paid ‘massively’ for a 2015 Honda mistake, as they went down the wrong direction with their chassis and were a little uncompetitive.
Valentino Rossi accused Marquez of ‘deliberately’ pushing him wide after a crash that same year, and the incident is still very well remembered 11 years on.
READ MORE: Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez told why they’re so similar to Michael Schumacher
Marc Marquez was ‘shocked’ by Valentino Rossi’s astounding 2015 accusations
Rossi once saw Marquez as his ‘successor’, and the two actually had quite a good relationship when they first shared the track together in 2013.
Over the next two years, things would sour between them, and the boiling point was reached at Philip Island, when the two were locked in a four-way battle for victory.
Valentino felt that Marc was going out of his way to help Jorge Lorenzo win the title, which wasn’t against the rules, but seemed against the spirit of racing.
The only problem was that he lacked concrete evidence, and there was nothing clear to suggest Marc did so. When he accused him of it in a press conference a week later, Marquez was left ‘shocked’.
“He was shocked. He said, ‘This guy told everyone I don’t have his poster in my room, but he was my idol for years. Why is this guy saying this b——- about me helping Lorenzo to win the championship?
“Lorenzo is the last guy I’d want to help. I don’t want to help anyone, even less Lorenzo.’ Marc didn’t have the best relationship with Jorge,” says Jordi Castella in Mat Oxley’s Marc The Magnificent biography.
READ MORE: How Jack Miller reacted to Marc Marquez’s MotoGP debut when he was still in Moto3
Why was Valentino Rossi so eager to win another MotoGP title in 2015?
At the time, Marc had just two titles to his name, while Valentino had seven in the premier class. It begs the question, why did things become so intense?
Perhaps it was because at the age of 36, the clock was ticking for the greatest of all time. MotoGP insiders thought it was ‘now or never’ for Rossi, and might have been aware of that too.
If he had won the title, then it would’ve been an extra one that Marquez had to achieve to draw level with him. He would still be one behind heading into 2026.
Of course, that’s not the way it panned out, and now the Spaniard can break that record this year. If he stays healthy, he might just smash it out the park.
Receive racing news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
