Marquez unleashes anger at Rossi: “It was intimidation. Peace? Not anymore”

Marquez will return for the 2023 MotoGP season (the second since Rossi’s retirement) knowing that winning the championship will draw him level with his eternal rival’s tally of seven.

Their names will remain in folklore forever and fans will continue arguing about who is the greatest - but Marquez and Rossi’s feisty personal relationship is clearly no closer to cooling down, nearly eight years on from their nastiest moments.

• What to expect from the official Sepang MotoGP Test

"That public attack at the press conference was bad,” Marquez said this week on Spanish TV, referring to 2015.

Rossi stunned the MotoGP paddock by claiming that his own Yamaha teammate and title rival, Jorge Lorenzo, was being aided to win the championship by Honda’s Marquez, who was no longer a contender.

“I had his phone number and Valentino had mine,” Marquez remembered. “And we didn't call each other. I was 22 years old, he was more than 10 years older, he had experience. 

“The Malaysian press conference arrived and instead of taking me aside and speaking he attacked me publicly, it was disrespectful. I think it was intimidation."

Rossi claimed “he is angry at me for a personal matter” at the time, adding “he would prefer Lorenzo to win”, in a notorious moment of MotoGP history.

Days later, at the Malaysian MotoGP in 2015, Marquez and Rossi battled thrillingly - with a hint of venom. 

"It was a crazy lap, we fought in an incredible way,” Marquez recalled. “Then Valentino made that decision.

“He threw me. It was no accident. 

“It may be that you push hard, losing control of the bike and colliding with that of the opponent, but it is no coincidence that you corner a rider on the side of the track, look at him and hit him with his leg. It was intentional."

Marquez fell and retired from the race, Rossi was criticised by fellow rivals for his part and punished by starting at the back of the grid in the season-finale in Valencia, which ultimately enabled Lorenzo to win the championship.

Marquez and Rossi have never recovered and, as he prepares to return to Sepang where their most notorious clash occurred for the 2023 preseason test, the Honda rider has revisited their feud.

"I don't have to be friends with everyone,” he said said.

“At the beginning I was willing to make peace with Valentino, but not anymore. We may well be indifferent.”

It wasn’t always this way.

"I grew up with two legends, one was Dani Pedrosa, the other was Valentino Rossi,” he said.

Rossi and Marquez’s loyal fan-bases have argued for almost eight years about who was the aggressor and who was the victim in their notorious rivalry, and whose legacy will be greater.

Marquez, aged 29, must overcome two years of injury hell plus a substandard Honda bike this year if he is to match Rossi’s title tally.

• Rossi and Marquez’s prime? “2023 grid strongest ever - we are all closer”

The toxicity of their rivalry is part of the reason that Marquez no longer actively uses social media.

"Maybe it's my point of view but there are fewer and fewer people who show character, preferring to hide behind a profile,” he said. 

“Now everything you say ends up on social networks, triggering hundreds of comments. If you keep up with him, you end up feeling bad. 

“It happened to me, but not anymore. I have a Twitter account, but I don't have it on my phone. 

“I have a social media manager, I tell him what he has to put, the photo that I always decide and he does it. I don't read what comes next. 

“I like Instagram, but I never read comments there either. Twitter, on the other hand, is a butcher's shop. When I returned to compete I realised that being too much around social media, it distracts me. I live much better now.”