VOL. 50 ISSUE 45 NOVEMBER 12, 2013
At just 20 years old, Marc Marquez
truly was the "Baby Champ On
Board" as he took the 2013 MotoGP
World Championship by a storm.
a rider in his first full season. Masetti, like Marquez, had raced in
the smaller classes in 1949, the
first year of the championship,
but not a full 500cc season.
The second was Kenny Roberts, in 1978. A real rookie: He'd
never raced in GPs before.
And now the youngster from
Catalunya, with the smile of The
Joker.
Marquez also broke Valentino
Rossi's record. It took Rossi five
years to win the championship in
all three classes. It took Marquez
four - and Rossi was one of the
riders he beat.
By the time they reached the
final race, there was just one rival
left, Jorge Lorenzo on the Yamaha. Both had finally outdistanced
Marquez's Repsol Honda teammate Dani Pedrosa,
by hook or by crook.
Remarkably,
all
three had scored
more than 300 points.
His rivals paid tribute after the race.
"Marc's
strong
point," said Lorenzo,
"is his talent and amMarquez's first win of the
season came in just the
second round – at the
Red Bull Grand Prix of
The Americas in Texas
– when he chased down
and beat his teammate
Dani Pedrosa.
bition. His weakest point… not
many. He is more imprecise than
me, but he can learn."
Pedrosa agreed it was "his will
and his talent. He rides on the
limit and seems like he is crashing all the time, but he controls
that point."
Marquez's own assessment
was "maybe in braking. On TV it
looks unstable, but I feel comfortable. What I need to improve is
my starting technique."
Marquez was as gracious in
victory as Lorenzo was in defeat.
"We are so proud of this first season. I didn't expect this, but now
my dream has come true earlier
than I expected. Maybe too early!"
Lorenzo had won two more
races in the year – eight to Marquez's six. But the youngster was
on the rostrum at every race but
two: he crashed in Italy while lying second, and was disqualified
in Australia.
P57
He really won the title with his
classic four wins in a row, when
his rivals were nursing broken
collarbones. Lorenzo lost it, he
thought, with his crash in practice in Germany, his first no-score
of the year.
It all began at pre-season tests.
All eyes were on Marquez, stepping into deep waters as he rode
the mighty RC213V for the first
time at Valencia one year ago. He
was immediately fast, just over a
second off teammate Pedrosa,
who was at lap-record speed.
Beginner's luck? Surely with so
much to learn – new tires, brakes,
electronics – plus more than double the horsepower. There's not
a rider who hasn't found his first
encounter with a MotoGP bike a
sobering encounter.
But this beginner had already
shown he was a bit different, and
at the first Sepang test of this
year he was fourth-fastest, now
