Valentino Rossi recalls 2024: ‘Marc Marquez hit me on purpose, he wanted to crash; I had to return the maneuver, and he dropped to the ground’
The rivalry between Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi has no pair in the world of motorcycle, and to the level of sports in general, and even after retiring three years ago, the truth is that Il Dottore and the current Gresini Racing pilot they still don’t lose out of love, and the Italian recalled some of the tension scalar between the two, in 2015, in a year he was trying to seal his 10th world.
Rossi was present on the Mig Babol podcast still has strong feelings before #93, and reminded how in almost a decade it was all escalated back in Argentina: ‘Then came 2015. I was in good shape and knew my main rival to win the championship was the Marquez, but also the [Jorge] Lorenzo. In the first race in Qatar, Marquez went right on the first turn, and I said «ok, that’s good, that’s good». It went well, that’s where I got the win in Qatar, and then Argentina against Marquez. That’s when our fight started. It starts in Argentina’.
The real confrontation then started in the American south country, with #46 recalling how he started by approaching the opponent: ‘I was behind, but he was being much faster than him, because he was catching him on each lap. Suddenly, I started to see it in the distance, because I was approaching me, until I finally got his air cone. And I thought, since I was coming very strong and it got past it, the fight was over. I always got along with him’ he recalled.
Yet the struggle on the track after all had more to give, and it was next that everything «soured» between the two: ‘We got to the right turn, I was already in front. He was behind, and instead of following me as I did, he came to beat me. He did on purpose to try and take me down, because he didn’t want to lose’.
Rossi then felt at the time that he should answer, but the ‘response’ ended his opponent on the ground, and Marquez still seemed to try to show that everything was ok, he explained, as the relation between the two was healthy: ‘I followed my line, but unfortunately we touched ourselves. But if he did that to me, I had to return it to him, so he went to the ground. After that, he continued to pretend to get along with me
