Pedrosa: “My way is to do the best for the team, Marquez had the other way”
Pedrosa and Marquez were Repsol Honda teammates for six seasons, during which time the younger man took over as the team’s star rider and most influential voice.
Pedrosa, now 37, returns to racing at the Spanish MotoGP this weekend as a wildcard entry for KTM and has been looking back on his time alongside Marquez.
“At least in the team we were in, HRC, it was like this: the one who goes the fastest is the number 1, the one who chooses the parts and the one who determines the direction a bit,” he told Revelo.
“When he arrived, I was in that position and with the races and the championships he took that position and decided in his own way.
"When I was directing more the evolution of the bike I had the parts first and I never thought in [my] own way.
“My way has always been to do the best for the team, and if I have the best parts to make the bike the best, I'm not thinking about my rival right next door, but about Yamaha, Ducati... whoever the rival was, because I consider myself part of the brand.
“Later he had that other way of doing it.
“I don't think I was missing [the same way as Marquez], because my way of being was that one.
“For example, before Marc came in, with Casey Stoner, he never played that game either."
Pedrosa remains the most successful rider in MotoGP to have never won a championship.
He finished as a runner-up three times, and third a further three times.
Marquez lifts lid on "trick" he pulled as Pedrosa's teammate
Marquez, the reigning Moto2 champion, joined him at Repsol Honda in 2013 and won the MotoGP championship in his rookie year, then again in 2014.
The Spanish duo largely had a fruitful relationship but Marquez, in his Amazon Prime Video documentary, made some revelations for the first time about how his competitive spirit would burn in a different way to Pedrosa’s.
“There was tension,” Marquez said. “He was the king, the No1, and people listened to what he said in the box.
“Everyone expected something from him. The team was focused on him.
“And out of nowhere comes this kid, in his first year after Moto2. First race… boom! Second race, boom! And it’s a hard pill to swallow.
“Back then we had a great bike and everything worked well. So if a replacement piece worked for him, then I didn’t like it [and I would say]: ‘This doesn’t work, I want this one!’
“‘I want this replacement piece, since I’m leading! Don’t give him this!’
“That’s how it was.
“‘How about this piece? You want to try it?’ But I didn’t want to. I just didn’t want him to have it.
“It’s the kind of trick everyone pulls. People don’t talk about it.”
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
