Marc Marquez has highlighted five names he considers to be his dream grid of rivals in MotoGP, with former Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa headlining that list.

In an interview with TNT Sport, the UK’s broadcaster for MotoGP, the current championship leader was asked to pick six names that would comprise his dream grid.

“The dream grid, would be Dani Pedrosa, [Jorge] Lorenzo, Valentino [Rossi], those three guys who I competed against. Then [Casey] Stoner, then [Mick] Doohan and me,” the factory Ducati rider said.

Marc Marquez’s appreciation for three-time MotoGP championship runner-up Pedrosa is well-documented, with the pair serving as team-mates at Honda between 2013 and 2018.

“I learned a lot from Dani Pedrosa, but because he was a team-mate and he is the one with whom I have learned the most about how to ride a MotoGP bike, what you have to do to go fast,” Marquez said in a recent DAZN interview.

“Dani had a handicap, which was height and strength. I tried to ride like him, but with more strength and a little more aggressive.

“That’s it, I tried to copy that, because he was the one who rode my bike.”

Pedrosa is considered the best rider in history never to win a premier class world title.

In their time together as team-mates, Marquez beat Pedrosa every year in the standings and also scored more wins than him.

Pedrosa retired at the end of the 2018 season and joined KTM as a test rider, which is a role he continues to hold in 2025.

Of that dream grid Marquez mentions, only one name has actually beaten him to a title: Jorge Lorenzo.

Marquez and Lorenzo went head-to-head in 2013, the former’s rookie season, with a championship showdown taking place at the final round in Valencia.

Lorenzo ultimately lost out to Marquez, while he was nowhere near rivalling him in 2014. Marquez’s title run came to a halt in 2015, as numerous mistakes aboard a difficult-to-manage Honda led to Yamaha team-mates Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi scrapping for the title.

Lorenzo won out in what descended into a controversial campaign, and so far remains the only rider to have beaten Marquez in a season where he was a legitimate title challenger.

Head-to-head, Rossi could get the better of Marquez

The fallout between Rossi and Marquez is practically legend now in MotoGP circles, and it’s a rivalry that will continue to be re-evaluated the closer the latter gets to beating his foe’s records.

Rossi and Marquez never really fought each other for a title, but they did have their fair share of head-to-heads in races.

And more often than not, Rossi was able to come out on top. Theirs is a battle that dates back to Marquez’s debut in 2013, when Rossi pipped him to second in the Qatar Grand Prix.

At Misano in 2014, Marquez made a mistake while heading Rossi, allowing the Italian to win. The pair connected during the 2015 Argentine Grand Prix, with Rossi coming out on top, and did so again later that year at Assen in a controversial last-corner trip across the gravel.

The pair also fought hard for the win at Barcelona in 2016, with Rossi winning that grands prix in what proved to be a rare simmering of tensions between them in the wake of Luis Salom’s tragic death earlier that weekend.

Rossi still has more world titles than Marquez, but the Spaniard is on course to matching that figure this season. After the first half of 2025, Marquez is now second all-time in premier class wins on 70 – 19 behind Rossi.

The big what if in Marquez’s career

Parallels are often drawn between Marquez and Mick Doohan. Both were dominant riders for Honda, and both have now found success in the wake of serious injury.

Doohan won his five 500cc world titles between 1994 and 1998, claiming 54 victories before injury would force him to retire.

Winning five titles in a row is something Marquez is yet to do, and may well not given the ever-changing competitive landscape of MotoGP.

But properly comparing both will always be difficult because of how different the eras were.

When it comes to comparing Marquez and Casey Stoner, that could well have been something that actually came to pass. At one point for 2013, Honda was considering bringing Marquez into the premier class with Stoner still at the factory team.

In a 2020 Autosport interview, former Honda boss Livio Suppo told this writer:

“Basically, Marc was already under contract because we did the contract in 2011 while he was racing in Moto2. He had a one-year contract to do Moto2. So, the original idea was to do Casey and Marc, and see what was going on with Dani and see what to do with him.”

Stoner would retire from MotoGP at the end of 2012 after just seven seasons in the premier class. Because of this, his tally of two world titles and 38 wins doesn’t really accurately reflect the kind of talent he was.

In a lot of ways, Stoner and Marquez are similar riders in their approach, and the pair as team-mates would have made for spectacular drama. Sadly, this will forever remain one of MotoGP’s biggest what ifs.