Top 10 Reasons Why MotoGP is Awesome: #7 — Rivalries

Reason number seven as to why MotoGP is awesome is because of the rivalries that exist within it. After all, what is a sport without rivalries?

So here is a video really promoting a race in Brno back in 2008, but it highlights classic rivalries in the sport and makes my point.

The rivalries are MotoGP classics. Sheene vs. Roberts. Rainey vs. Schwantz. Rossi vs. Biaggi. Rossi vs. Gibernau. They all want to beat the other guy with everything that they have. It certainly makes for some dramatic racing.

Rossi just seems to have a rival with everybody that he races against. His rivalry with Max Biaggi was fairly vicious. They seemed to dislike each other even before they raced against one another. Things got so bad that they got into a fight after one race before heading on to the podium.

The Rossi and Gibernau rivalry got fairly intense as well. After accusing Rossi of cheating, Gibernau went on to win a race that Rossi crashed out of. During the press conference afterward, Rossi said that Gibernau would never win another race. At the race in Jerez 2005, Rossi dove up the inside of Gibernau in the last corner, knocking him into the gravel, making sure that he did not win. To this day, Gibernau has not stood on the top step of the rostrum again.

A more modern rivalry is that of Stoner and Rossi during the 2008 season, as shown in the video above. (Missed it? See second paragraph...) Stoner was the reigning World Champ and Valentino wanted his title back. The two fought it out all through the year, including some close-call maneuvers at Laguna Seca, with Rossi eventually becoming the World Champ again.

The most famous rivalry now is Rossi vs. Jorge Lorenzo. The two used-to-be team-mates despise each other. There was a wall dividing their Fiat Yamaha garage and in 2010 no data was shared between the two riders. Sharing data is rather common in MotoGP garages.

Rossi and Lorenzo battled it out all the way through the 2009 season and continued in 2010 once Rossi's leg healed and he started racing again. An example of this is below with this picture. This is from Motegi, Japan in 2010 where Rossi is trying to get past Lorenzo and roughen-up the 2010 champion-elect Lorenzo. Yamaha management were certainly worried that they were going to take each other out.


Rivalries make sports more interesting and dramatic. Rivalries in MotoGP certainly are no exception and the seventh reason why the sport is so awesome.