Marc Márquez has always left an unforgettable detail in everyone who has had anything to do with him since he was a child. A race, a line, a technical gesture, a quote, a discussion...
"He was very serious. Now I see him and it feels like someone else, with so much spree, because as a child he was very introverted", tells Guim Roda, former rider and one of the architects of Marc leaving enduro and jumping into road racing [...].
"He used to travel in a caravan, like if it was a motorhome, a very old one. The image inspired tenderness with the amount of talent he showed", underlines Jordi Rojas, boss of Marc's first team, Procurve.
"He was 8, and there are many kids with talent at that age, but his intelligence was different, special", says Jordi. It's about, tells Roda, the way in which Marc dealt with things, the teachings and the improvement process. How to go faster.
"A lot of times a kid goes faster in a part of the circuit because it was asked by his father, to make him happy. But not Marc. He completely ignored his father's suggestions and wanted to understand on his own what to do to go faster and why it happened."
"He asked questions, he understood and improved his lap times". That peculiarity is one of the remains which have stayed around him.
"He was mature, he amazed you, I was impressed by his ability to perceive speed and not fearing falling, to try things, to imagine them before knowing how to try them and do them", says Roda.
Jordi, who helped him alongside his brother Josep [...], recognises that Marc learned [from them], but they also learned from him. "You could explain him few things because on track he did special things. But it was also how he talked at that age, the way to treat things, to prepare the race, to handle the pressure. And even better at 9 years old".
"I don't know whether he is gifted or not, but the spatial ability, the one to perceive his surroundings at high speed, the coldness at the part where others have fear and the adrenaline rush, he has it. Also his brother Àlex, he's different, but he has it", he explains.
Indeed, at that age, the hardest thing for Marc's bosses to let him understand was to learn how to lose, that you can't always win. "Obviously he cried when he lost, always. That part was tough for us, and even more so with his talent", says Roda.
"But he didn't look very high, he didn't worry himself setting goals or for not reaching the next step".
They stayed with him for three years and a half (from Open RACC 50 to CEV) and they also taught him how to be tidy. "How to clean his boots, to tidy up the material, to be careful. He was a very nice and polite kid, and he did it".
Marc had an agreement with his team to keep enjoying their motorbike and their assistance: he had to approve everything to keep racing. And he got really good grades.
Interviewer: Who would you party with? Who would you symbolically marry? I don't want to get you in trouble. And who would you kill? Pecco Bagnaia, Jorge lorenzo and Valentino Rossi.
Marc: I'm not going to answer. The websites put the headlines and you make a mess of it. [...] Partying... Lorenzo, who is not here. the other two we leave behind.
Interviewer: Aleix Espargaro or Alex Marquez
Aleix: Kill me, Kill me.
Marc: I kill him, he has less time left. And marry my brother.
(auto-translated, translation may contain inaccuracies)