Just as Marquez had to leave Honda, Verstappen must leave RB
The two greatest their respective sport’s have ever seen – Marc Marquez in MotoGP and Max Verstappen in F1 – appear to be on similar trajectories.
–by Mark Cipolloni–
Much like Verstappen appears to have tied his career to Red Bull Racing, Marc Márquez had always been assumed to be a career Honda MotoGP rider.
They both dominated their sport, before they didn’t when their team lost their way.
Marquez’s journey from Honda Hero, to Honda Zero to Ducati Hero looks remarkably similar to Verstappen’s current course.
When Marquez came into MotoGP he rode for the Repsol Honda factory team and won six titles in seven seasons, the only interruption coming thanks to his crash-prone 2015 campaign.
In 2019 the combination was so effective that he finished no lower than second for the entire season, winning 12 wins in 19 races .
This was Márquez at the peak of his success — the MotoGP equivalent of Verstappen dominating the 2023 season, winning all but three races and finishing off the podium only once.
When Ducati became the bike to have, Marquez had to over drive the Honda in order to keep up. As a result he crashed a lot and the wins stopped coming
His worse crash was a big highside at the first round of 2020, breaking his right arm.
The Honda was horrible and even Marquez’s teammates failed miserably on it.
Red Bull Racing, just like Honda, has found itself with a car that only one person can drive and that spits out anyone else who tries.
Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Pérez and now Liam Lawson have been sacrificed on an altar designed to worship only one driver.
Like Márquez, Verstappen has more talent than all other race car drivers and can drive a car that isn’t the best and still win with it while his teammate flounder.
And because of the Dutchman’s raw ability, the team has naturally wound itself around him.
“You’ve got to produce the quickest car, and you’re driven by the information that you have and the data that you have,” Horner said, per The Race.
“As a team, we don’t set out to make a car driver-centric, you just work on the info that you have and the feedback you have to produce the fastest car that you can.
“That’s obviously served us very well, with 122 victories.”
“In terms of finding the limit in a car that has inherent understeer, it’s always going to be easier than finding the limit in a car that’s a little bit more edgy,” Horner said.
“If I think back to the beginning of 2022, we had quite a stable car with quite a bit of understeer in it, which obviously Max hates.
“But we had an upgrade in Spain where we put a lot more front bite into the car. Max made a big step forward, Sergio Perez]sort of nosedived from that point.”
Márquez quit Honda at the end of 2023. In 2024 he switched to Ducati satellite Gresini to ride a year-old bike. He was on the sprint podium at just the second race and ended the year with three wins on his way to third in the championship, his best finish since 2019.
This year he is riding for the factory Ducati team alongside defending champion Francesco Bagnaia. He’s won both sprints and both grands prix to date, and has destroyed the defending champion Bagnaia.
Adrian Newey is no longer with the team and it has been all downhill. Given that last year’s RB20 was a real handful and now the RB21 is a real sled this year, Verstappen and his management must be looking hard at Verstappen’s next move.
Day by day, Verstappen’s displeasure with the ill handling Red Bull increases. How long can he carry the sled on his back before he says enough?
“Our car is extremely tough,” Verstappen said as pressure mounted on his former teammate.
“I think if you put Liam in the Racing Bulls car, he will go faster. I really think so. That car is easier to drive than ours”
While over a race distance there’s no question the Red Bull Racing car is better than the Racing Bull’s car, but only in the hands of Verstappen
“We acknowledge there is a lot of work to be done with the RB21,” Horner said. “Yuki’s experience will prove highly beneficial in helping to develop the current car.”
With Mercedes and Aston Martin reportedly circling — the latter backed by big money and having snatched Adrian Newey from Red Bull Racing — and there is a rumor, Aston Martin has offered Verstappen $1.2 billion over 5 years to drive for them.
Should Vertsappen take the Aston Martin offer, he will be reunited with Adrian Newey and Honda, who are leaving Red Bull after this year.
Márquez has proved that sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side. And for Verstappen, the road to greener pastures can be paved with a hell of a lot of greenbacks.