The first full biography of Marc Marquez examines the MotoGP dominator through the eyes of rivals, engineers and former MotoGP kings
Long-time AMCN contributor Mat Oxley wrote his biography of Marc Marquez after interviewing the seven-times MotoGP champion and dozens of people who have worked with him and raced against him over the past two decades. From rivals and engineers to crew chiefs, team managers, medical professionals and even former MotoGP champions, Oxley explains for the first time just how Marc works in the garage and how he rides on track.
The 32-year-old Spaniard is often misunderstood because he rarely talks about himself, preferring his results to do the talking. And the people who know him best paint a very different picture of the Marc we know from the one we see on TV and in the media.
Why Doohan thinks he’s the GOAT
Mick Doohan won five world 500cc GP titles in the 1990s, after coming back from horrendous injuries. He thinks Marc’s speed and grit make him unique. “Marc’s talent is to a level that hasn’t been since before, I believe,” says the Aussie great. “What he’s been able to achieve and how committed he is… I mean, he’s not scared to throw it down the road. Everyone else is trying to be on that fine line and staying under it, rather than being on that fine line and going over it. Marc goes over the line and goes, ‘Okay, there’s the line.’ For me, he’s just a different breed.”
Stoner says Marc’s talent is old-school
Few MotoGP riders have had the talent of twice champion Casey Stoner, who is amazed by the seven-time MotoGP king’s skills. “Marc is fantastic,” Stoner says. “He’s incredibly fast and no one can get close to his reaction times… When you get down to the nitty-gritty he’s a very, very intelligent cat. That’s why he’s so good at battling people and it’s why he’s so calm in most situations.
“I think what helps him dominate is that he’s able to understand what the rear tyre needs. Whereas everyone else relies on the traction control, he’s riding a little ahead of it. It’s that old-school sensibility before the TC cuts in and that’s something that really sets him apart.”
Marc on how it all started
Marquez’s dad got him into bikes. First he helped out at dirt-bike events, then he got a Yamaha PW50 for Christmas. “Mum and Dad were volunteers for Moto Club Segre and they helped with running the events, flagging, helping on the entrance gate,” he recalls. “My mum also worked in the bars, preparing sandwiches. Racing was a way to spend the weekend together. We went camping and there were always lots of people doing the same: pitching tents at the circuit, eating your mum’s packed food, sleeping, sometimes being too hot, sometimes freezing! It was fun. It was like a philosophy, or a way of life.”
When Marc was bullied by the big boys
When Marc started racing 125cc GP bikes he was so tiny (29kg, less than five stone) that his mechanics had to add ballast to his bike – and to him! – to reach the combined bike/rider minimum weight. And the bigger riders bullied him.
“We could only fit 17 kilos on the bike,” remembers mechanic Jordi Castella. “But we still needed more weight, so we put four kilos of sand in the back of his leathers. Super-dangerous!
“Then the problem was that other riders abused him because of his size. They rode into him. They were adults, much bigger than him, so they were bullying him. People say maybe he’s too aggressive but when he was young other riders abused him a lot.”
Talent is nothing without determination
Chief Öhlins suspension engineer Mats Larsson has been in MotoGP pitlane since the 1980s, so he’s worked with all the greats. “The main thing is that Marc wants it more than anyone else,” he says. “Marc is like (Wayne) Rainey, who would kill to win. Wayne was terrible to have around in the pit box when he got beaten, but come Monday he was the best guy in the world. He was so focused and motivated. Marc is the same. You see when he crashes, he’s up and running to get the bike going again. Marc needs it, he craves it. He’s so focused. The other guys are like spoiled little brats.”
Laser-focused ambition
Livio Suppo – Marc’s first Repsol Honda team boss – had to keep the peace when Marc caused teammate Dani Pedrosa to crash at Aragon in 2013. “We never had any problems with Marc and Dani except at Aragon, where it wasn’t only between the riders but also the families and everything,” says Suppo. “I spoke with Dani and with Marc. I said, ‘Try to be nice with Dani – I know you didn’t do it deliberately but anyway…’ He was just a kid and I remember like it was yesterday – he looked at me and said, ‘Do you realise that if you want to win the title you must count on me?’
“That’s the shark talking – you know, ‘Okay, it was a mistake, but if you want to win the title, it’s me’.”
Why Marc rode the Honda like he stole it
Honda’s RC213V has never been easy to ride, which is why Marc looked so spectacular on the bike and crashed it so much.
“The Honda is a little special, I think everybody knows that,” Marc says. “It’s a bike that you have to push to the limit to be fast. If you ride in a ‘comfortable’ way you cannot make the lap times. It’s a complicated bike. But once you know how much you can push, then you can get the maximum from it. I use the handlebars a lot in corner entry. I go in, I turn the ’bars a little to opposite lock and I slide a little. It comes naturally from doing so much dirt track.”
Marc is a freak!
“People have no idea how special Marc is – he’s a freak of nature,” said MotoGP race winner Cal Crutchlow when he rode Hondas alongside Marquez from 2015 to 2020. “I’ve never saved a bike at 62 degrees of lean, 15 times a weekend! That doesn’t happen with anyone else.
“He’s this freak that can get these results, week in, week out, while riding a bike that’s notoriously the hardest thing to ride. Marc is 100 per cent talent, plus he’s got that dogged determination to grit his teeth and get on with it. The Marquez factor is very, very special.”
Is this Marc’s coolest trick?
Both Honda and Ducati engineers say that although Marc enters corners faster than anyone else in MotoGP, he keeps his front tyre cooler, giving him more chances of overtaking. “How he handles the Michelin front tyre is still a mystery – I really don’t know how he manages it,” says Takeo Yokoyama, Honda’s former MotoGP technical director. “He gains so much time in braking, but often his front tyre temperature is the lowest. It’s very strange.”
Why the Marc v Rossi clash was inevitable
Aussie Supercross legend Chad Reed is good friends with both Marquez and Valentino Rossi. He always expected them to go to war. “I think it was always going to happen,” he says. “And from both sides of the fence I understand how and why it happened. The thing is you’ve got two natural-born killers, wired very much the same way, so it was always going to end that way.”
The war of 2015 started at Termas and Assen
Most paddock insiders think the Marquez/Rossi war began during the Argentine and Dutch GPs, where they clashed, Marc losing out on both occasions. War was officially declared during a Malaysian media event; the main battle fought three days later at Sepang.
“I think Termas was 50/50… Assen wasn’t correct, because Marc had the position,” says Stoner. “If people really ticked me off when I was racing I would’ve been happy to disrupt their championship. The way it went down wasn’t correct, it was Valentino in the wrong, not Marc. Marc was just being a disruptor and he had every right to be.”
Lorenzo’s view on the war of 2015
Three-times MotoGP king Jorge Lorenzo was the enemy of both Marquez and Rossi, so he saw their war from the outside. “For Marc, it wasn’t fair that Valentino jumped the chicane (at Assen) and won the race,” he says. “So from that moment, if he could, Marc wasn’t helping Valentino. I think Vale didn’t play well the diplomacy with Marc. He should’ve said, ‘How are you after Argentina? Everything okay? I didn’t do it on purpose.’ Play it a bit more diplomatically.”
When things got really ugly
Marc remembers being attacked at home by an Italian TV crew a week before the 2015 Valencia GP. “I was still living at my parents’ house and I remember it exactly, like it was yesterday,” he says. “I arrived home on my bicycle, with my trainer. I was opening the garage door and from nowhere two guys arrived in front of the house. One guy had a bottle of champagne and started spraying me with the champagne. The other guy was carrying a big dick (a blow-up penis, stuffed inside a plastic trophy).”
How Marc’s talent hurts rivals
Marquez took pole position at the 2019 Czech GP, using slicks on a partly wet track. He ended qualifying more than two seconds ahead of the second-fastest rider, Jack Miller. “I came in at the end of the session,” said Miller. “It was all high-fives from the boys. They were like, ‘Good session, mate!’ Then I looked at the screens and I saw I was f***ing two seconds off. Good? That’s good? F***ing hell, it hurts. It hurts.”
Marc’s injury hell
Long-term injuries don’t only affect riders physically, they can also affect them mentally. No wonder Marquez found himself slipping into depression during his three years of hell from July 2020 to November 2023.
“I was in a black hole,” he says. “I was going into that big black hole but I was never completely inside, because my brother (Alex) helped me a lot; he was there. If I had disconnected from MotoGP during that time then I would’ve been in a black hole, but my brother was racing and I kept following MotoGP, so I still had the adrenalin.
“It’s not good if you’re injured and you don’t follow your sport.”
When he knew he had to quit Honda
Marquez spent 2023 grappling with his future – stay with the factory Honda team or find a ride with an independent Ducati team? “After the summer break I said to myself, I will ride more calmly, so I started riding in a safety way,” he recalls. “But that was so boring! For me it was like a nightmare to go to a circuit and ride in easy-mode and fight for 15th place. I said to myself: Can I continue like this? This was the main question. At one race I was like: Okay, I will stay with Honda. At the next it was like… I cannot continue racing like this.”
The £17 million pay cut to win again
Independent MotoGP teams like Gresini don’t have the budget to pay fat salaries, so how much of a pay cut did Marc take in 2024, from his rumoured £17-million Honda salary?
“100 per cent,” he says. “I was riding for free, for the team. This was my bet, my investment into my career. When Gresini were waiting for me, I said to them, “Don’t worry, I want the bike only, I don’t want anything more.’”
The Marc R&D myth exploded
Some fans think Marquez is no good at bike set-up and machine development. Engineers that have worked with him disagree.
“In all the years I’ve worked in racing I’ve not known any rider at his level of knowledge of the bike and knowledge about set-up,” says Frankie Carchedi, his crew chief in 2024.
Part of Carchedi’s 2024 crew was veteran Öhlins suspension technician Mike Watt. “Sometimes Marc came in, thought about what was going on, then drew a graph on a piece of paper, maybe showing throttle trace, brake point and fork stroke,” says Watt. “We laid the paper over the data on the screen and they were the same! It was un-f***ing-believable! The first time he did it, me and Frankie were, like, what the!?”
Happiness is a Desmosedici
When Marc first rode a Ducati in November 2023, he knew immediately his hellish last few years at Honda were over.
“A lot of people talked about the look on my face when I took off my helmet after my first run on the Ducati,” he says. “But it wasn’t a face of, ‘Ah, now I have the bike and I will win again.’ No, it was a face of happiness. I was riding smooth, feeling the bike, feeling safe and the performance was already good in that first run. To be competitive on the Honda, the risks are on another level. So at that moment I understood that I’d made the correct decision and sooner or later a victory would arrive.”
Why Dall’Igna chose Marc
Many fans doubted Ducati guru Gigi Dall’Igna when he chose Marc for the 2025 factory Ducati team instead of 2024 champ Jorge Martin. So why did he do it?
“Marc isn’t only one of the greatest motorcyclists, he’s one of the world’s greatest sportsmen,” Dall’Igna explains. “It’s his intelligence, it’s the decisions he takes, on the track, in the garage and away from the track.”
Why Marc is a ‘monster’
“Apart from his speed, it’s the way he analyses the races, the way he does everything,” says MotoGP veteran Aleix Espargaro. “Marc can win 100 races out of 100! The way he controls the races, the way he approaches the weekend, how he rides, how he enjoys everything, he’s a monster. He’s unbeatable right now.”
MARC MARQUEZ
This biography is a large format hardback book with glossy colour plate sections, out now, available only from www.matoxley.bigcartel.com
