Former MotoGP star Jorge Lorenzo believes Marc Marquez now displays more respect towards rivals while battling with them on track, having initially found his antics to be “very aggressive”.

Lorenzo was one of Marquez’s main rivals during his golden period in the 2010s, with the pair even becoming team-mates at Honda in the former’s final season in 2019.

Their careers have taken different turns since then, with Lorenzo going on to become a commentator for Spanish broadcaster DAZN and Marquez joining the Gresini Ducati team in 2024 after being saddled with injuries and an uncompetitive bike in his final years at Honda.

Lorenzo admitted that he wasn’t a fan of Marquez’s style of racing when the latter graduated to the premier class in 2013 as the reigning Moto2 champion, but feels his countryman has changed the way he rides against other riders over the years.

“In 2013, I didn’t accept his [Marc’s] way of racing, which was very aggressive,” the three-time champion said at Festival dello Sport in Italy. “Now he has a bit more ‘respect’ towards his rivals. It must be said that the rules are stricter than ten years ago.”

Marc Marquez, Repsol Hond and Jorge Lorenzo, Yamaha

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Marquez won six titles in his first seven years in MotoGP, with Lorenzo – then at Yamaha – the only rider to break his run when he triumphed in the controversial 2015 season.

Things started going downhill for Marquez after Lorenzo retired from MotoGP, with a horrific crash at the 2020 season opener in Jerez leaving him with career-altering injuries.

It took multiple surgeries and prolonged layoff periods to put the accident behind, but by the time he was close to full fitness the Honda RC213V had slumped to become the slowest bike on the grid.

Lorenzo believes Marquez would have been able to win several additional titles had his arm not been broken at Jerez four years ago.

“He is a beast on a sporting level,” he said of the 31-year-old. “Since 2020, he has had very bad luck in terms of his physical condition. Without those problems, he would have won at least two or three more world championships.”

Marquez’s struggles at Honda prompted him to leave the Japanese manufacturer with a year left on his contract and join Gresini at the start of the 2024 season.

Marc Marquez, Gresini Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

He will move up to the factory Ducati team next year, partnering Francesco Bagnaia, and will be in a position to challenge for the championship for the first time since 2019.

Lorenzo himself spent two seasons with Ducati in 2017-18 as part of a multi-million deal with the aim of leading the Borgo Panigale marque to its first title since 2007.

Although the Spaniard did hit his stride in his second season after a slow adaptation, the partnership ultimately ended with just three wins to boot.

He ended up moving to Honda for what turned out to be his final year in the premier class, while Ducati slowly turned the Desmosedici into a dominant bike.

Hailing Ducati’s general manager Gigi Dall’Igna, Lorenzo said he would have been able to achieve the target set out by Ducati had he stayed with the team for a few more seasons.

“We met in 2004, in my last year in 125cc. Fate brought us together at Ducati,” he said of Dall’Igna. “I was very sorry not to have won a title with the Italian brand. I am convinced that, if I had stayed two more years, we would have won it.

“Now it is the best bike. It has no weak points.”

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Joey Logano went through a roller coaster of emotions during last weekend’s Round of 12 elimination race at the Charlotte Roval. He watched helplessly as Tyler Reddick charged through the field on fresh tires, slashing away at the points deficit while Logano could not move forward. At the checkered flag, Reddick was ahead by just four points.

However, about 2.5 hours later, everything changed. When Alex Bowman’s No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet failed to meet minimum weight requirements in post-race tech, his disqualification and subsequent loss of points pushed him out of the playoffs. Logano’s title hopes were instantly revived, taking Bowman’s place in the Round of 8.

“I was obviously surprised,” said Logano in a Tuesday media availability. “I heard rumors before that of a delay in tech and some of those things going on. Usually, nothing happens. It was kind of a surprise to hear that. Typically, by the time you roll the car off the scales, they give them the opportunity to put weight in the cars and you’re usually fine, but in this case that wasn’t the case and I was like, ‘Well, would we be in?’ That’s the first question you have to ask and obviously the answer was yes, and then you’re still kind of cautiously optimistic because you’re thinking, ‘Well, there probably will be an appeal if there is and we may not know until later,’ so you kind of keep going on with your life and preparing for the next race.”

“I was starting to move forward,” further explained the Team Penske driver. “You get there literally the moment we get out of the race car. It takes a little bit to get your thoughts collected and, honestly, by the time I was driving home, my wife and I were talking about something far more important than what we were doing at the racetrack. My mind was already starting to shift on what were the next moves and kind of getting over the race. Then I started hearing the rumors from there and the phone started to ring shortly after.”

Although this year been a bit of an ‘off’ year for Logano compared to previous seasons, he still appears to be in a very strong position. Penske has won back-to-back championships in the Next Gen era, and he has won races at every single track in the penultimate round of the playoffs. 

“Trends are trends for a reason,” noted Logano, agreeing that Penske has a knack for rising to the occasion when the championship trophy is in sight.

His dramatic win at Martinsville in 2018 launched him into the Championship 4 and allowed him to earn his first title over Martin Truex Jr. In 2022, his Round of 8 victory at Las Vegas put him into the Championship 4 again, this time beating Ross Chastain for the crown. Homestead, which now sits as the middle race in this round, was actually the title-decider when Logano won his first championship. And yes, he won that race too.

“We’ve done it before, we can do it again,” he declared when asked about his chances heading into this round.

Joey Logano, Team Penske, Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang

Photo by: Danny Hansen / NKP / Motorsport Images

Going into Vegas and looking at the final eight drivers in contention, Logano’s season has been the weakest, despite two race wins. He is last in top-fives, last in top-tens, and holds the lowest average finish among the Round of 8 field. But he’s certainly stepped it up since the playoffs began, especially in qualifying. He’s advanced into the pole round in five of the last six races, which is critical if he wants to score stage points. Logano believes there is a path forward on points for him, even sitting last in the reset standings. He is 40 points behind Kyle Larson, who sits at the top of the points pile, but only 11 points below the cut-line.

“I feel like we’ve been steadily getting better and improving throughout the season to where we are now. I feel confident in the speed we have in our car,” said Logano, who later added: “The stats may not look like it. It may look like we’re underdogs from the outset looking in, but internally we feel very confident in our race team that we can make a run at this thing and get ourselves into the Championship 4. We’ve seen it in the past where you get in there and anything can happen at Phoenix. The goal right now is to look at the next three races and how do we maximize that. We can point our way in. We’re only 11 out, so it’s not a lot of points by no means. It can happen very quickly, so one race at a time. Right now, the focus is Vegas and we’ll try to maximize the day there.

Joey Logano, Team Penske, Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang

Photo by: Nigel Kinrade / NKP / Motorsport Images

“We’ve lived this story many times before. Yeah, would it be easier if you had more playoff points? Yeah, but you know what? You win this weekend and you’re sitting as the favorite going into Phoenix, so it changes like that and that’s with the playoff system that we have. Every point matters throughout the whole season. I’m not discounting that, but you have to be your absolute best at this point in the season or else those points don’t even matter, so I feel confident in our team that we’ve got that. We’re still alive. We’re still going and that’s the name of the game in these playoffs. You just have to stay alive long enough. I said it last year that we did not accomplish that. This year, we’re gonna keep the pressure on all the way through.”

But the playoffs are nothing if not unpredictable, and the current car has only added to that. Half of the playoff races have been won by drivers that didn’t even make the playoffs with 18 different drivers visiting Victory Lane this year. Logano seemed unfazed by the dramatic shift from being eliminated to suddenly being thrown back into contention on Sunday night.

“It’s NASCAR, man,” smiled Logano. “I don’t know what to tell you. Expect the unexpected. You’ve got to go and just roll with the punches and go with the flow and just continue on. I feel like these days more and more there are just seasons like this. There’s just more crazy things that can happen than ever before, and a lot of that is due to the Next Gen car.”

Christian Lundgaard and Arrow McLaren were finally able to get some quality time together at the IndyCar Series testing last week at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. For Lundgaard, track day was more focused on the team-building experience — getting acclimated to the crew and organization, rather than trying to make record lap times.

“It was a little bit of a mix from a run plan standpoint of view,” Lundgaard told Motorsport.com. “It was good to understand how they’re working as a team and for us to work together on the No. 7 car and get used to each other. Obviously, get some more information for the month of May. So, it was a good start, but it’s difficult, man. It’s difficult when you only know one thing and suddenly you’re here working in a completely different way as you’re used to. But again, change is good.” 

The 23-year-old Dane, with one career IndyCar win (Toronto, 2022) so far, was able to pound laps in the recognizable papaya colors last Friday at IMS, which marked his first outing with the team since being announced as part of the 2025 roster in early July. But after spending the last three full-time seasons with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, there was quite a bit to get acclimated to.

Christian Lundgaard, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda

Photo by: Phillip Abbott / Motorsport Images

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“The car has more natural pace than what I was previously used to,” he said. 

“I think the balance has some familiarity to, again, what I’m used to. I didn’t really expect the biggest difference to be in handling. So, I think a lot of it was kind of what I expected, which is a good thing. But it was good to get to work with everybody. That was more of the task for us was to get to feel the car, get to work with everybody, for all of us to learn how to work together and the tools that I have available and the people that are available.” 

Perhaps no change was tougher to get adjusted to on his first day, though, than what he wraps his hands around in the cockpit, as he transitions from a Honda machine at RLL to Arrow McLaren’s Chevrolet.

“To me, getting to work with a new steering wheel was probably actually the biggest difference for me,” he said. “That took a little time getting used to, but it was all fine after that.”

Although the team has yet to confirm its engineering lineup for next year, it’s important to note that Chris Lawrence was the one up on the timing stand working with Lundgaard. Lawrence has long been embedded with Arrow McLaren, working extensively with Felix Rosenqvist, and then working with Alexander Rossi for the 2024 season.

While Arrow McLaren is keeping Lundgaard busy in the off-season, traveling around constantly, the test provided a good base line on things to work on for the next few months before racing returns in March 2025. 

“I would want to spend a lot of time with Chevy just to make sure that I’m up to date on procedures,” Lundgaard said. 

“All these different kinds of things. The basic simple things that I think you wouldn’t really think about, that would typically be muscle memory but is different because it is a different team and a different engine manufacturer. So, the small basic things that make sense that you need to be aware of, to make sure that we nail those.” 

As one of 11 drivers and team combinations doing hybrid testing at the 2.5-mile superspeedway, Lundgaard completed 88 laps, with a best of 219.566 mph. Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou set the fastest mark at 224.342 mph. 

Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

Hendrick Motorsports opted not to appeal the Alex Bowman disqualification from the Charlotte road course, an admission that there didn’t appear to be such an extenuating circumstance that they could convince an appeal hearing officer that it didn’t violate the intent of the rule.

HMS thought Sunday it had all four of its cars advance to the Round of 8 until Bowman’s car failed post-race weight requirements. Instead of earning 29 points, the disqualified Bowman earned one point for the event, putting him below the playoff cutline and Joey Logano into the playoffs.

All cars go through pre-race tech and must weigh 3,400-3,500 pounds depending on the weight of the driver (drivers are weighed periodically throughout the year). The top-5 cars, and then in the playoffs, the playoff cars, are weighed post-race. There is a tolerance of 0.5 percent, about 17 pounds, in the post-race inspection to allow for any natural loss of weight from the competition as parts and pieces break and fluid levels can fluctuate.

“Hendrick Motorsports will not appeal the disqualification of the No. 48 car following Sunday’s race at the Charlotte Roval,” the team said in a statement. “NASCAR allows a clear margin to account for the difference in pre- and post-race weight.

“After a thorough review by our team and the sanctioning body, we simply did not give ourselves enough margin to meet the post-race requirement. Although unintentional, the infraction was avoidable. We are extremely disappointed to lose a playoff spot under these circumstances and apologize to our fans and partners.”

Whether Hendrick did something uncouth or just is a victim of circumstance can be debated. The sport has a history of ingenious ways to take weight out of the car (and maybe even put it back near the end of the race). Wherever there is a tolerance, teams potentially will do things to get closer to the tolerance level. On pit road, drivers push their speed to the 5 mph tolerance above the speed limit.

There likely are ways to slyly remove weight or change a piece sometime between pre-race tech and the end of the race. Teams have put weight in a helmet bag. Teams have put different air in tires for tech in order to make the car heavier. It’s part of the game. It’s not that no one tries to get the car lighter after they go through tech, it’s just how far they want to get to the line where if something unintended happens, they fail the weight requirement.

NASCAR hasn’t said how much off the Bowman car was in tech, so there’s no way to definitively know how close they were. But the team was allowed to top off fuel and purge and replace its water system. That didn’t help the car make weight, and likely was key to the decision not to appeal as it appeared NASCAR gave Bowman’s team every opportunity to make weight.

It’s unfortunate for Bowman and hard to say how much it helped him, whether the weight of the car was worth the nine points he needed to advance to the next round.  But it’s obvious Hendrick folks didn’t see a way where they could— pardon the pun — tip the scales in their favor. So they have paid the price.

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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