{"id":182532,"date":"2025-10-01T12:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T12:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/182532\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T12:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T12:40:07","slug":"valentino-rossi-names-his-best-motogp-rivals-but-omits-one-big-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/182532\/","title":{"rendered":"Valentino Rossi names his best MotoGP rivals\u2026 but omits one big name"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi has named who he considers the biggest rivals of his career during an event in Indonesia, but excluded Marc Marquez from his list.<\/p>\n<p>Last weekend\u2019s Japanese Grand Prix saw <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/1654\/marc-marquez\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marc Marquez<\/a> equal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/1999\/valentino-rossi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Valentino Rossi<\/a>\u2019s career record of seven MotoGP world titles and nine championships overall.<\/p>\n<p>In the aftermath of Marquez\u2019s 2025 championship, many comparisons have been drawn between the careers of the Spaniard and Rossi, who bitterly fell out during the 2015 season.<\/p>\n<p>Over the course of Rossi\u2019s career, he engaged in many on-track battles with Marquez, though their relationship collapsed towards the end of the 2015 campaign when the former accused the latter of conspiring to sabotage his championship hopes.<\/p>\n<p>Rossi\u2019s racing career featured a number of major rivals, but Marquez was not one he cared to name during an event in Indonesia where is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/news\/1082958\/1\/vr46-puts-lombok-batik-vibes-indonesian-gp-special-livery\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">VR46 team launched its special livery for this weekend\u2019s round at Mandalika<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had a lot of great rivals in my career and I think it\u2019s between [Casey] Stoner and [Jorge] Lorenzo and [Max] Biaggi and [Dani] Pedrosa,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to say the bigger one.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe Lorenzo because we were in the same team and we were team-mates for a long time. So, it was not just a rivalry &#8211; it was like a love story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/feature\/1082720\/1\/why-marc-marquez-closing-circle-has-ended-motogps-goat-debate\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Why Marc Marquez &#8216;closing the circle&#8217; has ended MotoGP&#8217;s GOAT debate<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Rossi and double world champion Stoner\u2019s relationship has improved massively in recent times, with the Australian making several visits to the VR46 Ranch over the last year.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>During the Misano weekend Stoner was also seen offering advice to Rossi\u2019s Academy riders, in particular Pecco Bagnaia.<\/p>\n<p>After winning the title last weekend, Marquez told Spanish media that it was an honour to have joined Rossi and Giacomo Agostini as the only riders ever to win seven world titles.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, when asked to name his dream grid, Marquez did pick Rossi as one of the riders he\u2019d like to face.<\/p>\n<p>Rossi retired from MotoGP at the end of 2021 to pursue a career in car racing, with the Italian now competing in the FIA World Endurance Championship\u2019s LMGT3 class in a WRT-run BMW.<\/p>\n<p>He was fourth at the recent Fuji 6 Hours round of the WEC.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi has named who he considers the biggest rivals of his career during an event&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,4280,806,805,803,804,85,20420],"class_list":{"0":"post-182532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-marc-marquez","11":"tag-motor","12":"tag-motor-sports","13":"tag-motosport","14":"tag-motosports","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-valentino-rossi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}