Is being successful at all costs the most important thing?

Clearly Marc Marquez’s life mission is to win world titles, of course. He has superhuman driving skills, it’s always been a pleasure to see him drive, for years it has been the youngest driver in history to achieve certain results (which nominated him to be the best driver of all time). But he is a prisoner of his own character, which leads him to be a winner, but at the price of anger, criticism and controversy from colleagues and enthusiasts. Until 2015 it seemed the ideal driver, the light-hearted, unscrupulous, brilliant one, who wins by putting on a show; after that date, nothing was like before and, from many, he got the title of “infamous”. Subsequently he has not been guilty of accusations as serious as those of 2015 (having made Rossi lose the World Championship on purpose) however he remained faithful to two judgments given by Mattia Pasini, one of the most irreverent and amusing people when it comes to talking about riders. The first is “I’ve seen him do things like no other”, therefore a compliment of the highest level; the second though is “He has no idea what sportsmanship is”. All this pippotto of mine stems from the fact that, after having made a big mistake in Portugal, in which he overwhelmed Martin and Oliveira, Marc should have served a double long lap penalty in the next race, in Argentina. There was nothing to say, he had been clearly guilty. But then he found out he broke his hand, so he couldn’t have raced in Argentina. Logic would have wanted the double LLP to be carried out in the first race in which he returned, but no. Honda appealed under a rule from the FIM appeals court, which says this: if you make a mistake, you will have to serve a penalty in the next match. But if you were to get hurt for reasons unrelated to the injury and you had to miss the next race, the punishment would be considered extinguished. Already this rule seems to us one upsetbut Honda relied on the fact that, at the time of notification of the penalty, Marc still did not know that he had broken his hand, or at least that’s what it says. In short, with a quibble à la Machiavelli, Marc was saved, but I wonder how worth doing these things. Sure, one should do the utmost to get the most out of it. I don’t know, there’s one race left to go, you’re one step away from victory and this happens to you? Ok, there is some scrambling to not do the LLP. But someone like Marquez, who had already missed seven out of eight races, so he needed to save himself from that long lap penalty? Because, from a sporting point of view, he is one who crashed two riders and deserves the punishment: he managed to avoid it due to a clever technicality, which damages his sporting “sympathy” even more. Which is why I wonder: Is being successful at all costs really the most important thing? O, magari, it is better to go down in history for being a great driveralso from a human point of view, which warmed up the crowds, even if maybe he didn’t win the titles, like Randy Mamola?