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Franco Morbidelli says the Jerez MotoGP sprint crash in which he was hit by Takaaki Nakagami’s Honda was a direct consequence of the new format, as chaos returned to the Saturday race.
After a calmer half-distance offering at the Circuit of the Americas, MotoGP followed it up with a red flag-causing pile-up in the Jerez sprint.
This was triggered by Morbidelli and Alex Marquez colliding coming out of Curva Michelin, with both Morbidelli’s Yamaha and Marquez’s Ducati sliding across the track.
Morbidelli was hit by the LCR-run Honda of Takaaki Nakagami – but would be later very keen to emphasise how good a job Nakagami did to avoid a harder impact – while his now rider-less Yamaha was used as a launchpad by VR46 Ducati rider Marco Bezzecchi, whose bike caught fire in the gravel.
Pramac Ducati’s Johann Zarco also took a whack but stayed on, while further behind rookie Augusto Fernandez fell due to the chain reaction.
“I’m very happy that nothing serious happened because I remained in the middle of the track – actually I want to thank especially Taka for his reflex in avoiding me, I think he deserves a nice present,” said Morbidelli, who has been deemed at fault by the stewards and given a long-lap penalty.
“Now I will sort out a nice present to give him because he did the maximum to avoid me and he just hit me, but could have been much worse.”
Bezzecchi said: “I hit very hard the left part of my body, it was very painful, but I tried my best to race.”
Gresini rider Marquez felt Morbidelli had gone “past the limit”, their contact happening as their paths crossed over on corner exit – with Marquez having been sent slightly wide by Fabio Quartararo and Morbidelli carrying a lot of corner speed while hugging the inside kerb.
“There was no space. But I mean race direction [stewards] is a lottery,” he said.
“I hear a bike, I say ‘from where is it coming?’ And then I felt the contact, it was quite big. We were really lucky to have nobody hit us.
“In that that moment I was really, really angry because I said ‘no, one more time with contact’ [after being taken out by Jorge Martin at COTA]. But I was really lucky, honestly.”
“What does Alex say?” Morbidelli asked the media during his session, before going on to disagree with Marquez’s assessment.
“I didn’t try to overtake him, I was doing my corner.”
Asked whether it was a normal opening-lap incident or a consequence of the sprint race format, he said: “This is totally a sprint race crash. Because there are many overtaking moves in the early stages, he got overtaken by Fabio and he went a bit wide. I saw a gap, I went to do my corner nice and tight, I didn’t want to overtake him.
“To me, the guy cutting [back on] the line, he didn’t see me, he left no space, I don’t know. But the result is that he cut the line and we touched and I crashed.
“I didn’t want to overtake anybody. I just wanted to do my corner. But in the sprint race, all the things are so tight, every position you gain counts a whole lot. You gain a position, most likely you’re going to keep it for all race long because overtaking is so difficult nowadays.
“This is the result, people risking, risking, risking a lot, a whole lot. A whole lot.”
Marquez for his part said it was a mixture of sprint race circumstances and it being the first lap.
“It was a little bit crazy today but, OK, it’s racing,” he said.
“The approach is even more crazy because the people know now what is the game in that race. So everyone is more aggressive, everybody is pushing more.”
Tech3 Gas Gas rider Fernandez, who fell a few metres behind as he had to check up suddenly due to Honda’s Stefan Bradl slowing down up ahead, appeared to himself take a minor whack from another Honda, that of Iker Lecuona, after separating from his bike.
“We were into the first corner and everybody was trying everything and then also on the second one,” he said.
“Honestly, without taking a lot of risk I was finding space because everybody was going wide so I was finding space, but then I also crashed. So yeah, a bit crazy.
“Back in Austin we thought we were a little more relaxed but now back to normal.”
All the riders involved then managed to take the restart after the red flag was lifted.
