MotoGP | Marc: “Enea should have been penalised with a loss of position”

Misano, same track but two completely different scenarios: only two weeks ago Marc Marquez celebrated his second consecutive triumph, while today he smiles for an unexpected podium. Fourth was the best placement he could have expected, yet Pecco Bagnaia wanted to give a gift to his future teammate. The reigning champion slipped when he was third, effectively giving the last step of the podium to the Gresini rider.

However, Bagnaia’s fall and Marquez’s subsequent third place went unnoticed because the main topic of discussion was Enea Bastianini’s overtaking of Jorge Martin. On the last lap, the rider from Rimini launched a hard attack on the championship leader, taking the first position and going on to win. This maneuver did not please Marc, but not so much for the aggressiveness as for the fact that he had gone beyond the limits of the track.

On the last lap, exceeding the track limits means having to give up a position and, according to the eight-time world champion, this is the crux of the matter: “My point of view is always the same: in motorbikes, especially in the current MotoGP, if you have to overtake, you have to do it this way”.

“Especially if the performances are so similar, you have to overtake in this way, the hole sometimes isn’t there but it is created. Bastianini did it very well until he touched the blue. If he hadn’t touched it, which means off the track, nothing would have happened. It would have been a limit overtaking on the last lap, but once you touch the off the track, you have to give up a position, from my point of view. But the Race Direction decided the opposite,” explained Marquez after the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

The fault, however, is not so much Bastianini’s as the Race Direction’s, which does not have a uniform yardstick, judging from the words of Martin, but also of Marc: “These things happen in races, but you just need to have a clear criterion. The overtaking is clean, at the limit but clean. The only doubt there is is the two wheels that go off the track”.

“It’s a very similar overtaking move to the ones I’ve done, but if you go off or the other rider ends up on the ground, there’s a penalty. It’s always been like this, in the past I’ve made overly optimistic overtaking moves where the other rider fell or I went off. The blue? It’s not green, but it’s still off the track. Look for what’s not there, the blue is after the double kerb. It’s one thing to touch it while you’re doing a fast lap, it’s another to touch it when you’re overtaking,” he said, responding to those who compared Enea’s overtaking to the many they’ve seen Marc do in the past.

The battle at Misano ended with a defeat for Martin, who however increased his lead in the championship. According to Marc, the rider from Madrid fought like a lion and now, with a 24-point advantage over Bagnaia, he is the favorite: “He is ambitious. He fought and he did it well. He defended well, if there was a rider who wanted the victory at all costs today, it was Bastianini. They rode a great race, they were both very fast. Martin the favorite? Obviously”.

“The leader, even if he has a small advantage over the second, has more possibilities. At the moment Martin is the favorite because he has the advantage and I think that, from now until the end of the year, the mistakes, the first laps, going to the limit, pushing a little more, will mark the season. I think that it doesn’t help that you run two races on the same track, you go to the limit so much that you saw the crashes of Acosta, of Pecco”, he concluded.