INTERVIEW
P62
RIDER OF THE YEAR: MARC MARQUEZ
World Champion at just 20 years old.
or five races I started to change
the maps to feel the difference."
He'd had to unlearn a fair bit
of technique from Moto2, but
without losing the strengths he'd
gained in that unseemly brawl.
Like overtaking at every opportunity, though "in MotoGP, you
need to have a good confidence
and be clear. If not, the bike is a
little bit more heavy, the speed
is even more, so it is more difficult. But in Moto2 I learned a lot.
It's a good training especially for
the battle. In Moto2 always you
are fighting… normally it's a big
group. From this I learned a lot –
how to take my best and always
give my 100 percent, because it
is so difficult to make the difference in Moto2."
The biggest leap in the move
up had been "the electronic side.
All these things were completely
new to me: In Moto2 it is zero.
You can learn nothing."
The riding style is different. At
first, "I used too much banking,
too much track; with MotoGP
you need to make tight lines, and
pick up so early."
Going to Austin, scene of his
first pole and race win, had demonstrated this, because he didn't
have anything to try to forget. "I
never rode there in Moto2, so
when I arrived there in the beginning I had the line for MotoGP."
What he did manage to translate was the very late sideways
braking technique, to devastating effect - especially when he
brushed the back of Pedrosa's
bike at Aragon, cutting a wire and
disabling the traction control so
his teammate promptly crashed.
Perhaps Marquez's greatest gift
to MotoGP is simply this: brinkmanship. The two top established
Spanish stars were happily racing
against one another, Rossi striving to join them… when suddenly
this demon arrives among them.
He bumps into them, passes
them any old how, bounces back
every time he falls - and suddenly
he's running away with what they
thought belonged to them.
It's his now. And he's only 20. CN
