Valentino Rossi spots the best way to stop Marc Marquez winning a 10th title

The success of Marc Marquez in the 2025 MotoGP season has made the eight-times World Champion seem once again within reach of a ninth title, and even a 10th – an outcome that Valentino Rossi has found a prevention for, according to Carlo Pernat.

Pernat, former Aprilia boss and manager to many riders in the grand prix paddock including Enea Bastianini, says that Valentino Rossi sees Pedro Acosta as the solution to the possibility of Marc Marquez becoming an eight-time MotoGP World Champion.

Marquez, of course, has not yet won a seventh premier class title, which would move him level with Rossi in both premier class titles and grand prix titles across all classes with nine, but enters this weekend’s 11th round of the 2025 MotoGP season with a 68-point lead over Alex Marquez, and 126 points over VR46 Rider Academy member, three-time World Champion Francesco Bagnaia.

The Spaniard of the Ducati Lenovo Team, with whom Rossi developed a rivalry in the 2010s, will remain with the factory team of the Bologna manufacturer in 2026, keeping him in position to continue the domination of grand prix’s top category that he’s imposed in the first half of 2025.

Valentino Rossi knows how to thwart Marc Marquez

The complication for what Pernat says Rossi sees as the way to “prevent” Marquez from winning his 10th title is Acosta’s current contract with KTM, which expires at the end of 2026.

“His contract is not exactly one of those that are very easy to break,” Pernat told Italian sports publication MOW.

“We will have to understand what KTM will do in the immediate future because there is really a great tangle of situations there.

“Pedro Acosta would certainly [do anything] for a Ducati. And just as certainly both Ducati and Valentino Rossi would welcome him with open arms.

“I think Vale can see in Pedro Acosta what Marc Marquez was for him: the young opponent who will prevent the great champion from reaching ten titles.”