Injured Fernandez livid with Bezzecchi over start crash

Raul Fernandez has repeatedly excoriated Aprilia stablemate Marco Bezzecchi for his role in setting up their crash at the start of the Mandalika sprint, describing Bezzecchi's tactics as "not nice", "ungentlemanly" and "not clever".

Fernandez fractured his left index finger in the crash at the start of the sprint, which was triggered as four riders - Fernandez, Bezzecchi, Marc Marquez and Fabio Di Giannantonio - went into Turn 1 almost side-by-side and their lines converged deep into the corner.

As Di Giannantonio ran Marquez out wide, Bezzecchi checked up and had contact with Fernandez that took both out of the race and injured the latter. Fernandez is now in doubt for the grand prix, but will try to contest the warm-up.

Fernandez was seething after the sprint, giving explosive interviews to both Spanish broadcaster DAZN and Italian broadcaster Sky Sport, in which he effectively accused Bezzecchi of deliberately compromising his race at the cost of letting two Ducatis through.

His tone softened between the TV interviews and the written media, but his argument remained the same. Bezzecchi, he felt, approached Turn 1 with the focus only on beating Fernandez, squeezed him out and left the door open for the two Ducatis, which created the conditions for the crash.

"For me, the crash is a consequence of the start," Fernandez said. "On the start, for me I tried to keep my bike in the middle of the track, to try to not open the door for other riders to overtake. Marco had made a really good start and he overtook me - he didn't really overtake 100 percent, but he put the bike close to me and started to take me out the track.

"And this is for me the more frustrating thing about today. When you want to do something that is not clean in this sport. We are riders, we put our body [on the line] at more than 300km/h and when you are doing something that you know that is not really nice, I am not happy with that.

"And for me the version is, OK, we crash, it doesn't matter, it can happen, one day it will be me that I will make a mistake, another day will be another rider. The problem is when you are making something that you know is not nice. And for me this is the big problem that we saw today.

"We go out [wide] he doesn't give me space, two Ducatis overtook us, we crash, that's it."

Fernandez chuckled that it was "for sure not good" as a strategy by Bezzecchi. He said the Aprilia riders knew the battle for victory would play out between them, and accused Bezzecchi of "thinking just of me".

"I am not playing for the championship. He was playing for the championship. For me he was not very smart."

He also indicated he was more upset with Bezzecchi over this than with Jorge Martin over the Balaton Park pile-up at Turn 1, as that had been a mere mistake and this was a premeditated "bad action to another rider".

He said it was nothing that could or should be penalised but that Bezzecchi "didn't have the respect" and that, while Aprilia riders are told to be "gentlemen" with one another in terms of wheel-to-wheel racing, it "looks like he [Bezzecchi] was not a gentleman with us".

Bezzecchi defends himself

Bezzecchi was told of Fernandez's incandescence but chalked it up to heat-of-the-moment emotions clouding Fernandez's judgment. "I am maybe the one who can confirm this more than anyone," he joked, in seeming reference to his ban at Assen for striking a marshal.

It was a "racing incident", Bezzecchi insisted. "I was just looking to put myself in the best place possible for the braking. I knew Marc could try to overtake but was for me useless to try to force too much and maybe throw away the race in the first corner.

"It's what I did. If Raul is angry, I'm sorry, but honestly, he touched me! So at the end there's nothing to be angry for. Me versus him or him versus me, at the end it was a racing incident. I couldn't disappear and he also couldn't disappear. I don't want to waste energy with this, I want to focus for tomorrow."

How the Ducati pair saw it

Marquez, who went on to win the sprint, said the incident was "easy to explain".

"Four bikes in parallel, and I believe that Bezzecchi was looking at Raul, to brake a bit later, I was looking at Bezzecchi to brake a bit later, and Diggia was looking at me to brake a bit later. The consequence - four riders out of the line and [Jorge] Martin from fifth to first," he recounted.

Di Giannantonio had been completely unaware that anyone had crashed - but did say that contact with Marquez coming through the corner caused a downshift on his end that then compromised his exit from Turn 1.

"Honestly, you have to ask the others [about the incident] - me, I just got hit again."