Neither rancor nor desire for reconciliation. Despite the fact that Marc Márquez left behind his episode with Valentino Rossi years ago, # 93 cannot escape the questions that he is receiving about the Italian these days in the countless interviews that he is offering to various media to promote his latest documentary, Marc Márquez All Infrom today available on the Prime Video platform.
During his media round prior to the presentation of the Repsol Honda Team -scheduled for February 22 in Madrid-, the 30-year-old rider went through the microphones of the Herrera program at COPE, where he spoke about his new docuseries and a radio program in which he has also answered some questions related to his biggest rival in MotoGP, and the Italian Valentino Rossi.
About #46, Marc does not hide “have learned a lot from him” during the years in which Rossi exhibited his best level in MotoGP, and he does not hesitate to define the nine-time world champion as “a benchmark in motorcycling in general, because what he has contributed to motorcycling is a lot, and we have to be grateful.”
However, if Marc has learned anything since he debuted in the premier class in 2013, it is that “You don’t have to be everyone’s friend”, That is why he does not care about the coldness that currently exists between him and the man from Tavullia, a stormy relationship from which he also keeps good memories, including his visit to the VR46 Ranch: “With Valentino there have been good and bad moments, now each one goes their own way. I tell it a bit in the documentary, in 2014 he invited me to the ranch, which is his training site, and from there the situation changed a bit”.
The day that Marc refers to is none other than September 16, 2014when the Catalan visited Valentino Rossi’s ranch for the first and only time at the express invitation of the Italian; Marc attended the event along with other riders such as a very young Pecco Bagnaia, Leon Camier, Loris Capirossi or Tito Rabat, and shortly after starting his shooting on his Honda CRF450, the man from Cervera did not take long to pulverize the dirt track record. -track from #46, until that day unbeaten on his circuit.
Marc believes that this did not sit well with Rossi, and in fact he noticed a change in the Italian’s attitude towards him from that day on: “Why does it change? I don’t know, I think that the fact that they come to your house, to your training site, and make the track record for you, well, it doesn’t feel good…“, says the Repsol Honda Team rider with a laugh. “It’s like the teammate, who arrives and beats you, because you have your home, your training site, with more laps than anyone else, and the first day one arrives and sets the circuit record. From there It changed a bit. What happened then everyone already knows. Now everyone goes their own way”Add.
After that, the world famous Sepang episode took place, and when it seemed that the waters were slowly returning to their course, Marc threw Valentino in Argentina and their relationship exploded. Márquez does not hide his mistake in Termas de Río Hondoalthough at the same time it takes away iron remembering that this type of failure occurs in practically all the races on the calendar.
“In Argentina 2018 everything had already happened, we had a cordial relationship”, says #93. “But I make a mistake in Argentina, which I assumed, because in motorcycling there are overtaking to the limit and sometimes you don’t have it completely controlledIt has happened and will happen every weekend in all categories, it always happens sometime. In one of those overtaking my front wheel went off, with the bad luck that I crashed into him and he fell.”
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Márquez accepted the sanction he received then for shooting the Italian, but what he will never be able to forget were Rossi’s subsequent statements to the press accusing the Spaniard of being “a danger” for the whole grill and feel “fear” to run with him “They penalize me for it, I apologizebut then he accused me loudly, in a bad manner, and from there I said ‘I don’t want to know anything else’“, concludes that of Honda.