Startling truth of Márquez and Stoner's MotoGP supremacy: turning left!

We all know Marc Márquez is a demon when he’s turning left. No one can match the Spaniard’s entry speed and corner speed through left-handers, which is why he’s pretty much unbeatable at anti-clockwise tracks like Sachsenring, Aragon and COTA, at least when he’s fully fit or close to fully fit.

Even so, the data is quite startling, because Márquez’s anti-clockwise win rate is more than double his clockwise win rate. Since he graduated to the premier class in 2013, Márquez has won 34.9% of his starts. His clockwise win rate stands at 25.5%, while his anti-clockwise stands at 60.3%, meaning he has won close to two of every three races he’s started at go-left tracks.

Only one other rider has numbers anything like that: Casey Stoner. The 2007 and 2011 MotoGP champion won 32.5% of the races he started between 2006 and 2012. His win rate at clockwise circuits was 27.2%, against 44.4% at anti-clockwise tracks.

How do these numbers compare with those of the modern era’s other two greats, Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo?

Thanks to the work of data analyst Dimitri Stathopoulos, who works with multiple MotoGP TV broadcasters, we now know.

What really stands out when comparing the Fab Four is that Márquez and Stoner hold their own with the others at clockwise circuits, then crush them at anti-clockwise tracks.

Going right, Rossi’s and Lorenzo’s win rates are 26.9% and 27%, within two per cent of the lefties. Going left, they’re 16.7% and 14.5%, so Márquez is very close to quadrupling their win rate on anti-clockwise circuits, whereas Stoner is three times ahead.

Therefore, you could say that, more than anything else, Márquez and Stoner win championships thanks to their go-left skills, more than physical strength, bravery, intelligence and mindset, which affect performance the same whether you’re turning right or left.

Márquez and Stoner are as good as Rossi and Lorenzo at clockwise tracks and much better than them at anti-clockwise tracks (credit: Dimitri Stathopoulos)

Although few people talk about Stoner’s prowess at turn-left racetracks, we all know why he was like that. Like Márquez, Stoner grew up on dirt-track ovals, which run anti-clockwise, because that’s how it started in American dirt track.

(But why did American dirt tracks turn left? Because that’s how it’s always been, from the ancient Greeks at the early Olympics to the velodromes, the first two-wheel racing venues.)

While Stoner raced dirt track, Márquez trained on ovals, but what matters is they both grew up turning left more than right, so their brains, bodies and inner-gyroscopes became more attuned to doing that.

Stoner and Márquez don’t only stand out from Rossi and Lorenzo for their left-leaning successes; they also had that one-in-a-billion ability to ride motorcycles that no one else could ride.

During Stoner’s four years with Ducati, riding the devilish Desmosedici, the Aussie took 23 of Ducati’s 24 victories. During Márquez’s six pre-broken-humerus seasons in MotoGP, he won four times as many races as all the other Honda riders put together.

Most likely, their skills to ride around problems also come from dirt track, because riding on a loose surface – with the front tyre sliding and the rear tyre spinning – allows you to really work on your technique and experiment with different solutions to finding more grip, making the bike turn and so on.

“Dirt track racing teaches you a lot in a very short period of time,” says ‘King’ Kenny Roberts, the first dirt tracker to conquer MotoGP. “The natural stuff comes out much quicker because it’s not so fast, it’s more physical and the motorcycle’s much more controllable, whereas on a roadracer you commit and you’re committed, it’s much more precise. On the dirt tracker you can make adjustments, weight distribution means a lot, how you set it into the turn, and what the suspension does and all that stuff. With a roadracer you have all that but it’s much more precise.”

All this begs the inevitable question: who would win a Márquez versus Stoner face-off?

Most people who have worked with both riders believe they have similar skills when riding a motorcycle – the ability to ride consistently on the edge and adapt themselves to the needs of their machine, the circuit and conditions.

“I didn’t have one style,” says Stoner. “I was more adaptable than most – that’s why conditions didn’t matter and circuits didn’t matter. During practice I’d always try to get the bike doing exactly what I wanted, but when it came to crunch time I adapted to what I had and made the difference myself.”

On any given race day, it could be either of them that wins the race.

How about over a full championship or whole career?

Most likely Márquez, because he is relentless, thanks to almost inhuman levels of mental strength and determination. The man is a machine, who bounces back from horrendous crashes and horrific injuries and surgeries, time after time after time.

Stoner enjoyed working with his crew, then unleashing his artistry on the asphalt and that was it. Everything else was a nightmare for him, especially fame, which inevitably made him mentally weaker.

Some fans christened him ‘Casey Moaner’ because he was often negative about things. What those fans didn’t know was that Stoner had a tough upbringing – he was sometimes pushed too hard – and so he struggled with mental-health issues throughout his career. That made life very difficult, hence the negativity.

“I am here to race and the rest of it is just murder to me,” he said once. “I hate attention… I’d really just prefer to be a little mouse in a corner, forgotten about.”

Stoner also had his physical struggles. He got sick in 2009 and was diagnosed with lactose intolerance. Only much later was it discovered that he had Epstein-Barr virus, which may have triggered the chronic fatigue syndrome that plagues him now.

And he suffered a nasty back injury in 2003, while contesting the 125cc world championship, which affected him until very recently, when he underwent surgery to fix the problem.