Rossi and crew chief Jeremy Burgess with the Honda RC211V at Donington Park in July 2003. Burgess followed him to Yamaha for 2004. Photo: Box Repsol / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
On October 12, 2003, Valentino Rossi won the 2003 Malaysian MotoGP race at Sepang from pole position. He also set the fastest lap and clinched the MotoGP world championship with two rounds still to run. It was his third consecutive premier-class crown and the fifth world title of his career. “I now have five titles and it feels fantastic,” he said afterwards.
It was also the last championship he would win on a Honda. Before the next season began, the dominant rider of MotoGP’s early four-stroke era had turned his back on the dominant bike. He signed for Yamaha, a factory that had not won a premier-class riders’ title since Wayne Rainey in 1992. Sepang settled 2003. What Rossi did next shaped the rest of the decade.
A Season Honda Had Already Won
2003 was the second season of MotoGP’s 990cc four-stroke formula, and Honda’s RC211V was the machine to beat. Honda riders won 15 of the year’s 16 races. Rossi rode the factory Repsol Honda alongside Nicky Hayden. His crew chief was Jeremy Burgess, who had run his bikes since Rossi stepped up to the premier class in 2000.
The year began in tragedy. At the opening round at Suzuka in April, Daijiro Kato crashed heavily on his Honda and died two weeks later without regaining consciousness. Sete Gibernau inherited Kato’s factory-specification RC211V and became Rossi’s most persistent challenger. Ducati also returned to the premier class that year with the Desmosedici, and finished second to Honda in the constructors’ standings.
Malaysia was round 14 of 16. Rossi arrived with 282 points to Gibernau’s 224 and Max Biaggi’s 199, a 58-point lead with 75 points left on the table. Under the 25-points-for-a-win system, a strong Sunday would end the contest.
The 2003 Malaysian MotoGP: A Bad Start, Then Nothing Anyone Could Do
Rossi had already made his point in qualifying for the 2003 Malaysian MotoGP. His pole time of 2:02.480 was a new circuit record, ahead of Carlos Checa’s Yamaha, Makoto Tamada and Biaggi. He told reporters that the wide, fast layout of Sepang suited his riding style perfectly.
The start did not go to plan. Rossi made a poor getaway and was fourth by the first corner, behind Gibernau, Checa and Ducati’s Loris Capirossi. It took him one lap to sort it out. On lap two he passed Checa and Capirossi in quick succession and then went by Gibernau. On lap three he set the race’s fastest lap, a 2:03.822. By around lap nine the result was settled.
Rossi took the chequered flag after 21 laps in 43:41.457, 2.042 seconds ahead of Gibernau, with Biaggi a further five seconds back in third. Hayden made it four Hondas in the first four places. Checa was the best of the rest in fifth, and Capirossi brought the Ducati home sixth. It was Rossi’s seventh win of the season, and it left him on 307 points to Gibernau’s 244. With only 50 points left, the 63-point gap could not be closed.
It was a day for championships. Earlier at Sepang, Dani Pedrosa won the 125cc race and became world champion in the class that has since become Moto3, the first rung on the MotoGP ladder. And at Suzuka the same day, Michael Schumacher finished eighth in the Japanese Grand Prix to take a record sixth Formula 1 title, a month after his record-pace win at Monza.
What Rossi and His Rivals Said
Rossi called the year “hard but nice” and thanked his team and Honda. Gibernau was gracious in defeat and said Rossi deserved the title. He also promised to try to beat him in the final two races. Biaggi said he had tried a different tyre that did not work out.
Not everything was settled, however. Sepang was dominated by speculation about Rossi’s future. His Honda contract was up and rumours of a Ducati offer were circulating. Some reports suggested his talks with Honda had broken down. Gibernau was being talked about as Honda’s obvious lead rider if Rossi left.
Why the 2003 Malaysian MotoGP Mattered
The numbers from 2003 still stand out. Rossi won nine of the 16 races, finished on the podium at every round and scored 357 points, 80 more than Gibernau. Honda Racing Corporation calculates that he averaged 22.3 points per race, his most dominant premier-class season. From 2001 to 2003 he won 31 of 48 races on Hondas. In all, 33 of the RC211V’s eventual 48 victories were his.
He did not ease off after securing the title. In the next round at Phillip Island he won despite a ten-second penalty, finishing 15 seconds clear of the field. He then closed out his Honda career by winning the Valencia finale on a one-off livery.
By then Rossi had won everything there was to win on the best bike on the grid. Dissatisfied with Honda Racing Corporation, he declined a new contract and signed with Yamaha. Burgess went with him, along with crew members Bernard Ansiau, Alex Briggs and Gary Coleman. Burgess later said he moved because he wanted the challenge. The switch became a reference point for every MotoGP silly season since.
The Lasting Effect: A Champion Who Left the Best Bike and Won Again
Yamaha had been unable to win a race in 2003. For 2004 it changed direction and built a new YZR-M1, the 0WP3, with a crossplane crankshaft. Yamaha credits Rossi’s development feedback with helping it extract the bike’s full potential.
The payoff came immediately. At the season opener in Welkom, South Africa, on April 18, 2004, Rossi took pole and beat Biaggi’s Honda in a close fight. The win ended Honda’s run of ten straight wins. Because he had won the last race of 2003 for Honda, MotoGP.com notes he remains the only rider to win back-to-back premier-class races with two different manufacturers.
He went on to win nine races and the 2004 title, clinching it at Phillip Island by 0.097 seconds from Gibernau. It was Yamaha’s first premier-class riders’ championship since Rainey in 1992. Rossi spent seven seasons in his first spell at Yamaha and won four MotoGP titles. He moved to Ducati for 2011.
The technical era Rossi dominated did not last much longer. Honda replaced the RC211V with the RC212V for 2007, when the premier class dropped from 990cc to 800cc. It returned to 1000cc in 2012, and the class is now preparing for its 2027 reset to 850cc engines. Even so, the lesson of the 2003 Malaysian MotoGP and what followed has not changed. Rossi showed that a rider and a crew chief could leave the best bike on the grid and win again. Teams still argue about how much of a championship belongs to the rider and how much to the machine.
Related Reading on Backfire Racing
For how factory deals and team structures shape the grid today, read how MotoGP teams choose between factory and satellite status. Sepang is back in the news this year as the venue where Verstappen gave Red Bull Ford its first F1 win. And for the safety work that has reshaped the paddock since seasons like 2003, read how MotoGP sets safety equipment standards for riders.
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