MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi has once again pointed the finger at Marc Marquez over a bitter feud that he believes cost him an eighth championship in the premier class.
Rossi missed out on winning the 2015 riders’ title by just five points to Yamaha team-mate Jorge Lorenzo during a season in which he often clashed with Marquez both on and off the track.
The Italian accused the then-Honda rider of conspiring against him to aid Lorenzo’s bid for the title, and their relationship has never recovered since then.
Recalling his illustrious racing career on two-wheels in the MigBagol podcast hosted by VR46 Academy coach and former Moto3 rider Andrea Migno, the 45-year-old indicated that he still had unhealed wounds from one of the most controversial seasons in world championship history.
The two riders came to blows as early as the third round of the year, with Marquez retiring from the Argentine GP after hitting the M1 of Rossi, who went on to win the race.
“It's the worst thing that has ever happened to me on a sporting level,” he said.
“The dispute with Marquez had started in Argentina. He had chosen the medium rear tyre, I had chosen the hard tyre. He got away, but I recovered and caught up with him.
“I caught him on the straight after Turn 3 and braked well to overtake him. I got there, went into the right-hand corner and up to that point we had always got on well, but he came at me hard.
“I passed him and he thought the only chance he had was to crash into me. He tried to knock me down straight away, he deliberately came after me to try and throw me off.
“He didn't want to lose. I went back to my line [and] unfortunately we touched. You give it to me, I give it back to you. Then [Marc] went down.
“From then on our relationship fell apart. Despite that episode, he kept pretending to get along with me and kissing my ass.”
Later in Assen, Marquez and Rossi again made contact at the end of the final lap, with Rossi going straight through the chicane to score his third victory of the year.
“We got to the last lap and I'm always in front,” Rossi recalled. “In the last chicane I knew he was going to try.
“I tried to brake as hard as I could, but despite my extra braking he came at me again. He was going to throw me off.
“As soon as I felt him coming at me, I cut the chicane and won.
“I had braked to the limit, he braked in a way he would never have made the corner only to crash into me. I stayed up – not easily – I cut the chicane, I won, full stop.
“In the parc ferme he was pissed off, I had never seen a face like that. He said to me: ‘It's easy to win by cutting [a corner]’.
“I told him that he was coming at me and asked him what I should do [in that instance]. I told him he had to be objective. From then on it was really over [between us].”
Rossi claimed that his assistant Uccio Salucci had started receiving warning messages from Marquez’s camp following the events of the Dutch GP.
He said: “I heard them, especially [Marc Marquez’s manager Emilio] Alzamora, going around the paddock saying that 'now that we [Marquez] are not winning the title, he [Rossi] won't win it either'.
“They told this to some Spaniards who said it to some Spanish friends of mine, who told me. They started telling me to be careful in the last few races. Even Uccio told me to be careful with Marquez.”
In the Australian Grand Prix, Rossi could finish no higher than fourth after a long battle with Marquez, who later went on to win the race.
Rossi maintains that Marquez did everything he could to prevent him from winning in Phillip Island. But his claim that the Honda rider was assisting Lorenzo’s championship bid is weakened by the fact that he passed his countryman on the final lap, denying him five crucial points in the title run-in.
“Marquez was so superior that he did the [whole] race fighting with me, he made me lose and then he also won,” said Rossi, now a BMW factory driver in the World Endurance Championship since his retirement from two-wheel racing.
“We are counting facts. If one [looks] at the times, that's what he has done, it's not an assumption [that he was purposely riding slowly for a long time]. It's clearly what happened.”
The following week in Malaysia, Rossi publicly accused Marquez of trying to help Lorenzo win the title.
“In Malaysia I went against him in the press conference because I wanted to try to throw him shit at him, to say in front of everyone what he was doing, in the hope that he would stop doing it,” Rossi recounted.
“Also because he had nothing to do with it. Lorenzo and I were fighting for the championship.
“If you are fighting for the title, then I could understand it. But if you have nothing to do with it, you are not even a team-mate [to the title contender], you have to have the respect not to piss other people off.
“You just have to do your own race, try to win and that's it. But it hurt me in Sepang and it bothered me for the whole race.”
Tensions boiled over in the Malaysian GP, which featured the most infamous crash between the pair that left Marquez on the ground.
Explaining what happened at Sepang from his point of view, Rossi said: “He had tried to make me fall three or four times and luckily he didn't get me.
“I got very close to him and I looked at him and said ‘OK, what the hell are you doing?’
“We just touched. I didn't want to knock him down, but he fell. He made me lose the world championship also because they made me start last in Valencia.”
It turned out to be the deciding moment in the title fight, with Rossi sent to the back of the grid in the Valencia finale as part of the penalty.
“After the race the stewards called me,” he recalled. “I was with Maio Meregalli from Yamaha and Marquez was with Emilio Alzamora, who started to insult me.
“I asked him why he was there as he was not from Honda. There was a bit of a scuffle. In the end Mike Webb announced that I would start last in Valencia, something that has never happened in MotoGP.
“Normally they would have penalised me at Sepang, instead of third I would have finished fifth.
“If they thought I had deliberately dropped Marquez they should have made me do it, instead they didn't and made up the last starting position in Valencia. They cut my legs off, I had lost the world championship.
“There was Marquez with his head down. I told him that by doing this he was going to carry it for the rest of his career, because it's disgusting for the sport to make someone else lose.
“The moment they told me I would start last, he actually raised his head, looked at Alzamora and smiled, nodding as if to say 'we did it'.”
Summing up his thoughts, Rossi described Marquez as the most “dirty” rider in the history of motorcycle racing, while reiterating that the Spaniard wanted him to lose the 2015 title.
“Marquez is a very strong rider, a champion,” he said. “He has always been quite rude, very aggressive, but in 2015 he crossed the line.
“If you are bad sportsman or aggressive you can be borderline dirty and I could give so many examples. But no one, among the big stars of motorsport, has ever fought to make another driver lose, that is what draws the line.
“Usually those who did certain things did it for themselves, they were dirty to gain their own advantage, because they wanted to win.
“Nobody has been as dirty as him.”
