Repsol Honda's lead rider Marc Marquez has admitted that being cordial with MotoGP great Valentino Rossi would have worked in his favour when the duo had numerous infamous tussles which began in 2015.
In his book, "Being Marc Marquez: This Is How I Win My Race", the Spaniard says when the thought of playing nice came to the fore after the 2018 Argentina grand prix (GP) (when his aggressive rmanoeuvre resulted in Yamaha's Rossi going off the track and falling down), "I definitely thought, 'you know what? Forget it'."
"He has a lot of fans and it meant antagonising them, but what choice did I have? Being unfaithful to myself? Of course not. I hate pretending, being dishonest. For tactical reasons, it would have been better to pretend to be Valentino's friend, but I'm not like that.," wrote Marquez.
But the battle between the two men was at its peak in 2015, when Rossi publicly accused Marquez of trying to assist Jorge Lorenzo, who was sharing the Factory Yamaha garage with Rossi at the time, in winning the MotoGP title and when Rossi was penalised for kicking Marquez in Malaysia that year (which led to Marc's retirement).
Marc is not known for pulling his punches and he wrote in the book, "The battle between Valentino and I got so bad that we lost respect for each other. He had been my hero and in a few months he became [a rival] for me, and he remains so to this day. Between Australia and Malaysia in 2015 he accused me of absurd things and in the press conference it went too far. In no case was it a Spanish conspiracy against the Italian."
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