Marquez looking forward to healthy rivalry with Lorenzo

Spanish MotoGP great Marc Marquez said he was looking forward to a healthy rivalry next season with Jorge Lorenzo, who will be his new teammate at Repsol Honda.

"Rule No. 1 in a MotoGP team is to beat out your teammate. That's how it is in all the teams, but there'll be things Jorge will look at from my (bike's) telemetry, and sometimes it'll be the other way around," Marquez said on Thursday, reports Efe.

The Spanish rider, a four-time MotoGP champion, leads the 2018 riders' standings with 95 points, 23 ahead of Italian seven-time champion Valentino Rossi heading into Sunday's Catalan motorcycle Grand Prix, the seventh race on the 19-race calendar.

The 25-year-old Marquez said that in the planning for 2019 he had not expressed opposition to any of the MotoGP riders but insisted on having a strong teammate.

Repsol Honda confirmed on June 6 that it would be ending its long-standing partnership with Dani Pedrosa and that Lorenzo, a 31-year-old three-time champion, would ride for the team in the 2019 and 2020 seasons.

"Jorge will be coming over from Ducati. He'll have to adapt to Honda's style," Marquez said, adding that as part of that process he would "look at my telemetry, Cal's (LCR Honda rider Cal Crutchlow), Dani's (Pedrosa, who has been with Repsol Honda since 2006).

"I knew they were weighing different possibilities and that one of them was Dani, who's been a teammate I've learned a lot from," he said.

"I think Dani has to be very grateful to Honda, and Honda to Dani. They've been a duo for many years; they haven't won a MotoGP title for many reasons, but they've done really important things," Marquez said of the 32-year-old Pedrosa, a championship runner-up in 2007, 2010 and 2012.

--IANS

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