Joan Mir was a huge talent let loose on the open market last year when Suzuki decided to wrap up their project in MotoGP. The Spaniard, already a world champion in Moto3 and MotoGP respectively, was snagged by a manufacturer in dire need of a reshuffle in their line-up in the form of Honda. Mir was shuffled into the factory Repsol colours and tasked with doing something no-one has managed since 2013: beat Marc Marquez from within his own pit box.
It’s a tall order regardless of how you look at it. Marc entered the premier class in 2013 and won the championship on his first attempt, repeating the feat five more times before the decade was done. In the 10 years between 2010 and 2019 he was champion on eight separate occasions, and is in the conversation for greatest rider to ever swing his leg over a racing bike. No teammate of his has ever been able to beat him over the course of a MotoGP championship, and few have even managed to come close.
To properly understand the hill Mir is going to have to climb here, let’s take a look at Marc’s history with his teammates to see how it looks from an analytical standpoint. The numbers don’t tend to lie, and they paint a clear picture of the monster task ahead of the 2020 champ.
Pol Espargaro
2022: 16th (-3 positions), 56 points (-57)
2021: 12th (-5 positions), 100 points (-42)
First up is Marc’s outgoing teammate, the younger of the two Espargaro brothers (or Espargabros, if you will). Pol is someone who has duelled Marc at each stage along his career, having battled for titles in both Moto3 and Moto2, and has been present for the majority of his career in MotoGP, albeit on different machinery. When provided the opportunity to replace Alex Marquez in the Repsol squad – more on that later – he jumped at the prospect of facing his former rival on equal machinery. Admirably, he entered the lion’s den with no fear of the lion itself.
The problem for Pol was that he walked into Honda right in the midst of their worst downtick in form since they began producing MotoGP bikes. Coming across from KTM right as the project finally started delivering real results, the Espargaro brother found himself struggling to understand this fierce beast of a motorcycle that was designed solely for Marc Marquez to weaponise, and despite promises from his bosses that change was on the way it never really seemed to arrive. Instead of flourishing in a team he had always dreamed of riding for, Pol found himself mired down the championship order for two years straight.
Numerically, you could argue he wasn’t *technically* a million miles away from Marc, but the reality was he started and ended both seasons a long stretch behind the strength and results of his teammate. It’s worth remembering that Marc missed a number of both seasons due to ongoing injury woes, meaning that Pol had a myriad of opportunities to surpass him and instead ended up 40+ points behind in both instances. If Marc had contested each race between ’21 and ’22 and maintained his average points for the season, these numbers would be even more embarrassing for Espargaro. A welcome return to KTM awaits him for 2023, at least.
Alex Marquez
2020: N/A
Technically – technically – Alex and Marc were both teammates and brothers for 2020, after the younger sibling was promoted to fill the unexpected retirement of Jorge Lorenzo. None of that ended up mattering, however, as Marc’s off in the opening race of the season ruled him out for the rest of the season, with several surgeries, a number of missed races and an entire documentary series following close behind. Alex was left to do battle with stand-in rider Stefan Bradl for the season as Repsol Honda teammates, something that he did admirably at.
This was a weird season to begin with thanks to Covid-19 shutting racing down for months and Alex losing his spot in the team for 2021 before he had even spun a wheel in anger, but perhaps the biggest thing we were robbed of was the possibility of two Marquez brothers doing battle on track with equal machinery. Alas, we can only dream of what that might have looked like.
Jorge Lorenzo
2019: 19th (-18 positions), 28 points (-392)
Herein lies the best example of how impossible it can be to stand against Marc Marquez as his teammate. Jorge Lorenzo, five times a champion in his own right, stepped into Honda’s fold to combat his long-time rival from within the same pit box and was promptly crushed for an entire season. Lorenzo never so much as sniffed a podium while wearing orange, with his one real opportunity going begging in the infamous bowling incident at Catalunya. This single season was so bad it led to Lorenzo’s early retirement, calling time before he could see out the second year of his contract with Honda.
While Marc was out setting records for the highest-scoring individual championship score in the history of the sport, winning 12 out of a possible 19 races and taking second place every other time he finished, Lorenzo had to settle for barely scraping points when it was possible and finishing races some 20+ seconds behind his teammate with shocking regularity. It was an embarrassment of a season for Lorenzo, and the scorecard tells you basically everything you need to know, as Marc single-handedly took the triple crown without breaking a sweat.
Dani Pedrosa
2018: 11th (-10 positions), 117 points (-204)
2017: 4th (-3 positions), 210 points (-88)
2016: 6th (-5 positions), 155 points (-143)
2015: 4th (-1 position), 206 points (-36)
2014: 4th (-3 positions), 246 points (-116)
2013: 3rd (-2 positions), 300 points (-34)
Finally, we reach the one who first had to do battle against Marc from alongside him – Dani Pedrosa, who rode with Repsol from his first season in the class back in 2006 all the way to his final one in 2018. Despite being one of the best riders in his era and one of the four ‘aliens’ of the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, Pedrosa often found himself as the number 2 rider in his own team, and when Australian Casey Stoner stepped away after the 2012 season he likely believed his time had come to fight for the crown once more as the top dog at Honda.
That didn’t end up playing out for even a single season. Marc’s skill on a bike was so self-evident from the moment he entered the premier class that he won the title first try and left Dani trailing him. Admittedly, Pedrosa still managed to put together an impressive career alongside him, winning races and bagging myriad podiums every season until he finally called time, but give he never actually won a rider’s championship within the squad it’s no wonder Marc became the number one rider when it came to development. Pedrosa’s skills as a rider allowed him to continue putting up results even as the bike became more and more specialised to Marc’s requests, but even he couldn’t overthrow the young superstar.
This is perhaps the crux of the issue – Pedrosa was one of the most talented riders of his generation, and by all rights should have been a match for Marc Marquez on equal machinery, but it never ended up coming about. The closest he came was in 2015 when Marc’s “win it or bin it” strategy finally caught up to him and he started binning it far too frequently, but even then the shocking speed and talent Marc possessed stopped Dani from actually usurping him over the course of a season. It was a different time, but the numbers still paint a rather specific picture.
Joan Mir
So, what does Mir have to do to find success in 2023? Something that no rider before him has done, and none have come particularly close to. The circumstances now are somewhat different to how they were when Marc first entered the class, with the Honda no longer the most competitive bike on the grid and Marc having suffered some serious setbacks in recent seasons, but it will still be a massive hill for the young upstart to climb.
That said, don’t discount Mir. For the first time since he entered the Honda team, Marc has a teammate much younger than him who has recently won a MotoGP title of his own. Mir’s stats tell a story of their own, and he will go into this season believing he has the best chance of anyone to date at defeating the Repsol dragon. Could he be the one to do it? Only time will tell.
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