MotoGP | Bagnaia accuses Alex Marquez: “He looked for contact and didn’t close the throttle”

The Aragon Grand Prix started badly and ended even worse for Pecco Bagnaia, who arrived as the leader, but after the Sprint on Saturday he lost the lead by 3 points, making the situation even worse at the end of the race on Sunday, in which he collapsed to -23 from the leader Jorge Martin. A bitter weekend for the reigning world champion, who was the protagonist, despite himself, of a bad fall with just a few laps to go.

In the furious comeback after a complicated start due to the very dirty track, the Ducati rider managed to get close to Alex Marquez, third for most of the race. At the moment of the brawl, however, something went wrong: the Gresini team rider tried to defend by going wide and allowing Pecco to enter, who was hit by the blue GP23. Both ended up in the gravel, in the fury of the Piedmontese, who suffered some bruises to his left ankle.

Nothing serious from a physical point of view for Bagnaia, who however is very harsh towards his teammate, guilty of having ruined a race in which he would certainly have achieved the podium: “It’s not that I need to explain what happened, it’s quite clear from all points of view. The dynamics are one and it’s clear. It also makes me angry, because the data is even worse than the reality. It’s worrying that there are riders who still do certain things. Have I spoken to him? No, he doesn’t even look me in the face. So you can understand the character well”.

“In any case, he was long and I passed him. Before making the change I was already a bit in front, so he definitely saw me. I didn’t go to close much because my speed was enough to close on the way. But once we got inside, I already felt a twist of the throttle, he tried to make contact. Looking at the data, he didn’t close the throttle again until we fell. He was there pushing me out, 40 to 60% throttle is something unacceptable, it’s dangerous for certain riders to do certain things,” said Bagnaia explaining the dynamics of the accident.

The incident between the two was immediately put under investigation by Race Direction, as is usual in these cases. Although Bagnaia claimed that the fault was entirely Alex Marquez’s, the Stewards decided not to sanction either rider, filing the contact as a racing incident: “The incident between Bagnaia and Marquez at Turn 13 on Lap 18 was reviewed after the race. The Stewards listened to both riders and heard their explanations of the incident from both points of view, as well as reviewing the images from other angles and with the technical data. During the discussions, both riders explained that the grip off the line was difficult to manage and in the opinion of the Stewards, this is a factor that contributed to the impossibility of avoiding the contact. The conclusion of the FIM MotoGP Stewards, after taking into account all the points and without any obvious factors, is that neither rider bears major responsibility for the incident”, reads the note from Race Direction.

Pecco’s regret is even greater, because, after all the difficulties of the weekend, he was seeing the podium ever closer. A third position would have straightened out a weekend that started badly: “After everything that happened, third position was an easy goal. I arrived, I was third and I was lapping half a second faster than those in front. Let’s say that this weekend not even one thing went right, I had several problems. The times I had a normal situation I was third in qualifying, today I was fast”.

“But we started the same way again. When I got to the grid, I immediately understood that it would be a difficult race because my spot was even dirtier than yesterday. They should have cleaned it, but evidently they had other things to do. From there everything was quite complicated, I was managing and Morbidelli wasn’t, so it was difficult to overtake. But, once I had passed, I easily recovered on everyone in front of me. A great shame, because today finishing third would have meant a lot after the weekend that it was, but someone decided not to let me finish,” thundered Bagnaia, who also had something to say about those who didn’t clean the track, dirty since the beginning of the weekend.

Now it’s time to get back on track and fly to Misano, where next week we’ll be back on track for what will be Bagnaia’s home race. He’ll be the pursuer there, but will Marc Marquez be in the mix as well as Martin? “Marc fighting? You can’t know, Enea was fighting too after Silverstone. We need to see his consistency, as a reaction. Marc is definitely very strong and this will give him a lot of motivation. In my opinion, the fight will still be between me and Martin, we’ll see if Marc can make the same difference at Misano too”, concluded Pecco.