by Mat Oxley
Sometimes sportsmen set the bar too high, too soon. It seemed like Marc Márquez had done just that when he won last year’s MotoGP world title in his rookie season.
So how do you top that? By winning the first ten races of your second season in the class of kings and securing the title with three races to go.
Last year Marquez became the youngest rider to win the premier-class crown
A record-breaking win
Thus Márquez’s 2014 MotoGP campaign was just as impressive as his first and it broke another age-old record. Last year the Spaniard became the youngest rider to win the premier-class crown, taking the record held by fellow Honda rider Freddie Spencer since 1983.
This year’s success aboard his Repsol RC213V makes Márquez the youngest rider to win back-to-back premier titles, breaking a record set half a century ago by Mike Hailwood, recognised by many as the greatest rider of all time. And the 21-year-old is still younger than Spencer was when the American took the crown!
‘Already last year it was amazing to win the championship,’ says Márquez. ‘Last year was difficult but if people think that this year looked easier, in fact it was more difficult because there was more pressure. I tried to manage it well but I felt it. I’m always smiling and I always look happy, but it was really difficult to maintain my level and my concentration.’
All Márquez wants is to go faster, which means pushing the bike beyond its design limits
On another level
Márquez is so dominant because he has raised MotoGP riding to a new level. In recent years the accepted way of going fast on a MotoGP bike was to be super smooth and use graceful, arcing, cornering lines.
Márquez could no doubt do that if he wanted, but most of all he wants to go faster, which means pushing the bike beyond its design limits and then dealing with the consequences. Hence his wild and sometimes scary riding technique, which has fans, rivals and former champions agog.
‘Marc goes beyond the grip level of the front tyre,’ says Spencer. ‘So he’s using his corner-entry speed and the tyre movement to get the bike to pivot around the front tyre.’
Most pro racers can pivot a motorcycle around the rear tyre but pivoting it around the front highlights the magnitude of Márquez’s genius. For all but one in a billion people, trying that trick would end in disaster.
Márquez puts the Honda motorcycle to good use in his safely-out-of-control style
An amazing talent
Wayne Gardner, who won the world title with Honda in 1987, is similarly impressed. ‘Marc is an amazing talent – I look at him and see a rider who has no limits,’ says the Australian. ‘I think Honda have given him a very good bike and he puts it to good use in his safely-out-of-control style. I wait for him to crash but he doesn’t – obviously it’s talent, it’s youth and it’s a style I’ve not seen before.’
Despite his success Márquez has had his critics and not all of them speak out of jealousy. If genius technique is one part of his racetrack armoury, the other is searing aggression, which got him into plenty of trouble on his way to the top.
However, Márquez changed during 2014. With a year’s experience of his RC213V behind him, he was more in control. Ironically, it was some of his critics who increased their aggression to cope with the new champion.
‘Marc is still very aggressive but now it looks like he has the situation under control, whereas before he risked too much,’ says his childhood hero and former MotoGP king Valentino Rossi, with whom he enjoyed several epic duels in 2014. ‘The big question for all his rivals at end of last year was how much can he improve. Unfortunately for us he improved a lot; in the way he uses the bike, the way he brakes and the way he accelerates.’
Márquez has continued to improve in the way he uses the bike
Admiration from the critics
Even Jorge Lorenzo, another former MotoGP champion and once Márquez’s loudest critic, now admits admiration for the man who stole his title in 2013.
“This year Marc was almost perfect,” says Lorenzo. “He always rides at a very high level – he’s very aggressive but now he’s also very consistent, without all the crashes he had in the first part of 2013. This year he’s been the best.”
Despite his domination, Márquez says he still has plenty to learn. “The biggest improvement this year was that everything was easier with more experience. When you arrive at a track it’s not all new, you have the references from last year and you know the secrets to the lap time, but I’m still learning and in some situations I still need to improve. I made fewer mistakes this season but I still made mistakes, so we can improve on that.”
Márquez made one of those mistakes during winter training on a dirt bike, when he fell and broke his right fibula just four weeks before the first race. He was still limping heavily when he arrived at Doha for the season opener, but he went and won it any.
Breaking more records
Looking at the four world titles he has won over the past five seasons – three of them powered by Honda – it’s tempting to wonder where he will get his motivation from during the coming decade. Márquez is fast approaching 50 Grand Prix wins – across the 125, Moto2 and MotoGP classes – so perhaps he has his eye on Giacomo Agostini’s all-time record of 122 wins, established way back in the 1960s and 1970s.
‘Ha, I don’t think so!’ grins the youngster, who is rarely anything but self-deprecating. ‘It was different in those times because riders competed in several categories, so Ago’s record is so far away.’
And what about Formula One cars? Rossi dabbled in F1 with Ferrari before finally deciding that he prefers bikes and therefore leaving John Surtees’ unique bike/car title double untouched. What about Márquez?
‘I’d like to do a test in a car but to drive a whole season? No, my world is bikes!’ he says.
Let’s ask him that same question in another five or six years…
