Valentino Rossi has used a TV interview to revive the 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix incident with Marc Marquez that saw two of MotoGP’s greatest champions begin a bitter rivalry, with Marquez on the cusp of surpassing Rossi’s achievements with an eighth premier-class title and 10th world championship in all at the upcoming Portuguese Grand Prix.
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Elsewhere, Aprilia’s Jorge Martin battled the pain barrier and mental demons from the 2025 Qatar Grand Prix accident that left him with fractured ribs and a punctured lung at Lusail, while MotoGP deputy CEO Carlos Ezpeleta has refused to be drawn on what punishment Yamaha may face for withdrawing both of its teams, including Aussie rider Jack Miller, from the contentious event in Qatar last weekend.
There’s that and more in MotoGP Pit Talk, your news wrap of the stories behind the headlines ahead of the penultimate round of the season at the Algarve circuit outside of Portimao from November 20-22.
Marquez has one hand on title | 01:04
‘MAKES ME ANGRIER’: ROSSI BOOK POURS FUEL ON NEVER-ENDING MARQUEZ RIVALRY
Valentino Rossi has reopened old wounds with Marc Marquez in an interview on Italian TV promoting his new autobiography, with the seven-time MotoGP champion calling his 2015 Malaysian Grand Prix battle with the Spaniard “absurd” 11 years after two of the sport’s biggest names spectacularly fell out at Sepang.
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Marquez has a 60-point championship lead over nearest rival Jorge Martin after finishing second to Martin’s Aprilia teammate Marco Bezzecchi last Sunday in Qatar; should he be at least 37 points ahead after the Portuguese Grand Prix, Marquez will win his eighth premier-class title and 10th in all, one more than Rossi in both categories.
Marquez looked up to Rossi and the pair were mostly cordial when Marquez took over from another of Rossi’s great rivals, Australia’s Casey Stoner, at the factory Honda team in 2013.
Their relationship took a turn for the worse after Rossi accused Marquez of helping his Yamaha teammate and fellow Spaniard Jorge Lorenzo to win the 2015 world title after that year’s Australian Grand Prix, with Rossi and Marquez coming to blows at the following race in Malaysia after a frantic battle, Rossi causing Marquez to crash and being sent to the back of the grid for the season finale in Valencia, where Lorenzo secured his second MotoGP title.
Rossi’s autobiography ‘My Story’ will be launched in Italy this week and elsewhere in early 2027; speaking to Italian TV show ‘Che Tempo Che Fa’, Rossi made it clear that his fury over the incident hasn’t dissipated.
“Everyone has their limits – some lower, some higher – but unfortunately the story of 2015 is even more absurd and makes me even angrier because, in reality, Marquez wasn’t fighting for the championship; it was Lorenzo and I who were battling it out,” Rossi said.
“He was only fighting to make me lose, and in the end, he succeeded. That’s something that really doesn’t go away – it still stings.
“More than 10 years have passed, but the feeling and my state of mind when I think about it are the same as they were on that night in Valencia, and that worries me a little.
“But often I look in the mirror and tell myself, ‘let’s not focus on that one loss but maybe on the others’ … but that’s how sport is. What you lose hurts much more than what you win.”
An eighth premier-class title for Marquez would be his second in succession after multiple injuries and a move from Honda to Ducati for 2024; should he secure the crown, the Spaniard will match current teammate and Rossi protégé Francesco Bagnaia as the only riders to win consecutive championships for Ducati in MotoGP.
In 372 MotoGP starts from 2000-21, Rossi won 89 Grands Prix and those seven titles; Marquez, who started his 224th premier-class Grand Prix in Qatar last weekend, won for the 80th time in the top flight in Malaysia one round previously as he bids for an eighth MotoGP crown 13 years after his first as a 20-year-old rookie in 2013.
MARTIN BANISHES BAD MEMORIES OF QATAR WITH GRITTY FINISH
Aprilia’s Jorge Martin has openly discussed the mental challenges of competing in last weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix, the Spaniard returning to the site of a brutal accident in 2025 that saw him miss nearly half the season and derail his 2024 title defence.
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Martin, who broke his right wrist in a crash in the sprint race at the Australian Grand Prix on October 24, finished a remarkable third in the Qatar sprint just 14 days later last Saturday, coming from 11th on the grid to briefly lead and keep his faint title chances against Marc Marquez alive.
Marquez could have won the championship had he taken victory and Martin didn’t score a point in Sunday’s 22-lap Qatar Grand Prix, but Marquez finished second and Martin seventh to deny Marquez a title on his first match point in a season for just the third time in his career.
Martin ready to put injury behind him | 01:01
At the Qatar Grand Prix in April 2025, Martin – who had missed the first three rounds of the season after breaking his right hand and right foot in a pre-season testing crash in Malaysia, then breaking his left radius and scaphoid in a motocross accident – fell at turn 12 in front of Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio, who was unable to avoid hitting the Spaniard; Martin was left with 11 rib fractures and a punctured lung, and spent weeks in a Doha hospital where, he admitted later, he feared for his life. He competed in just seven of last year’s 22 Grands Prix.
Martin, who has led the standings after seven rounds this year and has taken one Grand Prix win and four sprint victories, said on Sunday at Lusail that he thought of his 2025 accident every time he went through the same corner, and had Di Giannantonio behind him in eighth place after passing the Italian on lap 11 of the 22-lap race.
“I think I unblocked one more fear,” Martin said.
“Every time I went into corner 12 – with ‘Diggia’ (Di Giannantonio) behind – it was a s**t feeling, honestly. It wasn’t nice. But I was fully concentrated with much more knowledge about myself, about the bike, the control I have, so I was able to go through that corner in a good way.
“Always the effort is worth it because you improve, you learn, you prove (to) yourself, so this is what I take home.”
While adrenaline powered Martin to the podium in Saturday’s 11-lap Qatar sprint, Sunday’s full-distance Grand Prix was hell on his fractured right wrist, and came just a week after he’d withdrawn from the Malaysian Grand Prix because the pain was too much.
“The last few laps I was destroyed, and I was just trying to finish,” he said.
“(On) Tuesday I wasn’t even thinking about coming (to Qatar), and I was on the podium (in the sprint) and I did a great job (in the Grand Prix), so I’m happy.
“It was worth it, but now I feel a lot of pain. Luckily I have two weeks to recover and in Portimao I will be at almost my 100 per cent.”
MOTOGP QUIET ON POTENTIAL YAMAHA SANCTIONS AFTER BOYCOTT
MotoGP deputy CEO Carlos Ezpeleta said he will not “discuss publicly” the prospect of any sanctions being levied at Yamaha, after the Japanese manufacturer refused to send its two MotoGP teams, including the Pramac Racing squad featuring Australian rider Jack Miller, to Qatar last weekend because of safety concerns.
The Qatar Grand Prix went ahead despite widespread rider discontent that first emerged during the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island, with the race outside of Doha – already postponed from April for safety concerns because of the US/Israel versus Iran military conflict in the nearby region – considered to be unsafe by Yamaha with tensions in the area predicted to escalate after last week’s US mid-term elections.
Championship leader Marc Marquez said he would “like to be in another place” in the Qatar pre-event press conference, and while enhanced security was evident at Lusail and MotoGP teams were issued with information on emergency shelter locations and safety protocols if necessary, the event went off without a hitch, despite air strikes taking place in nearby Iran and Saudi Arabia and after a security alert was issued to American citizens in Qatar on Friday, per reports from multiple news outlets.
Formula 1 – also owned by MotoGP’s owners Liberty Media – is set to race in Qatar from November 27-29, and concludes its season in nearby Abu Dhabi the following weekend (December 4-6).
Speaking to a drastically reduced press pack in Qatar, Ezpeleta said any potential sanction for Yamaha – which withdrew from Qatar after the Malaysian Grand Prix in a statement that indicated the Japanese manufacturer had “not identified sufficient grounds to change its existing company-wide travel restrictions” – was a matter for the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM), the sport’s governing body, rather than MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group (MSEG), for whom he is deputy CEO.
“This is a commercial contract that we cannot discuss publicly,” Ezpeleta said.
“We will talk to Yamaha and from there, if anything is decided, it will be communicated. But as of today, our relationship with them is commercial and, as we always say, we neither want to be involved in the sporting side nor are we involved in it. That is a matter for the FIM.”
Ezpeleta said the tense atmosphere with the riders that dominated the Sepang weekend ahead of Yamaha’s withdrawal – after Miller was one of the few riders to engage in the Qatar discussion after the Malaysian Grand Prix – could have been handled better.
“We had all the assurances from the local government (and) the promoter that the event could be held safely, with contingency plans prepared in case something happened,” he said.
“We have done all the work that needed to be done, except probably in the area of communication with the teams. You learn from everything, and we will try to do better in the future.
“The riders have always been the stars of MotoGP, and they will continue to be. We carry out a self-assessment of everything. There are things we will have to improve, things the teams will have to improve, and others the riders will have to improve. Because of the noise created around the event, we exposed ourselves unnecessarily, and that is what we have to correct.
“We believe it has been a completely normal weekend. All the security protocols at the circuit have been increased, partly because of the noise there has been … but apart from that, there has been no difference compared with previous years.”
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