{"id":184501,"date":"2025-10-02T07:35:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T07:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/184501\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T07:35:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T07:35:18","slug":"marc-marquez-responds-to-valentino-rossis-rival-list-we-never-fought-for-a-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/184501\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc Marquez responds to Valentino Rossi\u2019s rival list: \u201cWe never fought for a championship\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marc Marquez<\/a> brushed off being absent from Valentino Rossi\u2019s <\/a>list of his biggest MotoGP <\/a>rivals.<\/p>\n

Speaking at VR46\u2019s Mandalika livery launch earlier this week, Rossi named Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo, Max Biaggi and Dani Pedrosa <\/a>as his biggest rivals, choosing Lorenzo as \u201cmaybe\u201d the strongest due to their years together as Yamaha team-mates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not just a rivalry – it was like a love story,\u201d Rossi said.<\/p>\n

Eyebrows were raised that Rossi didn\u2019t include Marquez, who raced against Rossi from his MotoGP debut in 2013 until The Doctor\u2019s retirement at the end of 2021.<\/p>\n

But the pair have been estranged since a bitter falling out during 2015, the only season in which Rossi defeated Marquez but lost the title, at the final round, to team-mate Lorenzo.<\/p>\n

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Marquez has now matched Rossi\u2019s seven career premier-class titles by securing this year\u2019s crown in his debut year for Ducati Lenovo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked about his omission from Rossi\u2019s list, on Thursday in Mandalika, Marquez replied: \u201cBecause we never fought for a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clarifying that he wasn\u2019t referring to winning six of his titles when Rossi was on track, while Rossi didn\u2019t win any titles against Marquez, the Spaniard added:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, no, not in that way\u2026. It’s just that when I arrived, my biggest opponent, for example, one year was Lorenzo. And then jumped to Dovizioso.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marc Marquez \u201cAlready working on 2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Marquez\u2019s dominance this season, six years after his last title, means he can spend the remaining five rounds with one eye on 2026.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYeah, this weekend we start already the work for 2026,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to retry some things, try to play a bit with the set-up, try to play with the different things that are available and try to start to work for 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

With 11 Grand Prix wins so far, Marquez has the chance to beat his 2014 record of 13 in a season but insisted he won\u2019t be putting any extra pressure on himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cA long time ago I was winning and there remained some races, it was like I wanted to arrive to the next one, attack and win everything,\u201d he reflected.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut right now it’s like I suffered such a lot of pressure during all the seasons that I just want to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet’s see, the first target is try not to do stupid mistakes because when you achieve your main target, the adrenaline comes down and then sometimes you don’t have the same concentration.\u201d<\/p>\n

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However, he agreed that 13 Grand Prix wins are within reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I’m on eleven? Yeah, we can, because I think about Phillip Island and Valencia!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose two circuits [are good for me] but let’s see because Mandalika, Malaysia and Portimao are not the best ones on the calendar for me, but I can defend.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as I said, I don\u2019t want to put pressure on myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marc <\/p>\n

Marc Marquez, Francesco Bagnaia<\/p>\n

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“How different was Misano Pecco and Motegi Pecco?”<\/p>\n

Apart from Marquez\u2019s title glory, the big talking point from Motegi was the resurgence of team-mate Francesco Bagnaia, who stormed to a double victory by leading every lap of the Sprint and Grand Prix on a revised GP25.<\/p>\n

The Italian cited bike changes made at the Misano test, but Marquez suggested qualifying also played a major role, contrasting Bagnaia\u2019s weekend with that of his brother, Alex Marquez.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I have the chance to fight, I will try. But as we see, it’s quite difficult with these bikes to fight a lot,\u201d Marquez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we’ve seen in Motegi, for example, Pecco won. But how different was Misano Pecco and Motegi Pecco? In the end, his performance was the same, the bike more or less similar. But he started first or he started in the middle of the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr Alex, for example. The difference between Catalunya Alex and Motegi Alex. The difference was he started on pole or he started in the middle of the group.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt’s super difficult to overtake with these bikes. And yeah, we will try to fight, but you cannot do more than six, seven overtakes in a race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gresini rider Alex holds a 66 point advantage for second in the standings over Bagnaia heading into this weekend.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marc Marquez brushed off being absent from Valentino Rossi\u2019s list of his biggest MotoGP rivals. Speaking at VR46\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,8456,4280,806,805,803,804,85,20420],"class_list":{"0":"post-184501","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-ducati-lenovo-team","11":"tag-marc-marquez","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-valentino-rossi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184501","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=184501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}