The penultimate weekend of the season started on an uphill climb for Franco Morbidelli, who struggled since Friday and ended today’s qualifying in 18th position. This inevitably affected the Sprint, which ended in 15th place. However, the Yamaha rider was a big protagonist on Saturday due to an unpleasant episode which saw him involved with Aleix Espargaro during Q1.
A fall caused the yellow flag to be displayed, thus forcing the riders to slow down. Among these there was also Morbidelli, who turned off the gas as the rule requires. Aleix Espargaro, however, arrived at full speed, having not seen the yellow flags, and found himself in front of the Roman Yamaha rider, forcefully overtaking him two corners later. Once the obstacle was overcome, Morbido wanted to regain his position, but the Aprilia rider did not approve of the gesture by putting him back in. When Franco tried to calm him down with a wave of his hand, Aleix responded by slapping the Italian on the helmet.
An incomprehensible, unjustifiable and unspeakable gesture. Especially since it comes from a rider like Aleix Espargaro, standard-bearer of safety and champion of respect. For this reason, the Race Direction gave him a penalty of 6 positions less on the starting grid to be served in Sunday’s race (which in all likelihood he will not compete due to the fall in the Sprint which caused him to fracture the head of the fibula ).
“We were called to the Race Direction, but I have nothing to say to him,” explained Morbidelli, recounting the episode he experienced firsthand. “However, he usually has disproportionate, exaggerated and even violent reactions to some situations. Bad to show the world, bad to have with people who work with you, bad to have with people who run against you. It was hard for me today to have to live and be part of such a situation, unfortunately. However, I remain proud and happy with my integrity, and proud of being able to look everyone in the face. I had nothing to say to him in Race Direction and I will have nothing to say to him. He probably didn’t have much to say either, other than excuses of very little value, but not towards me. He made excuses to justify his unjustifiable gesture. Yet he didn’t even try to apologize.”
The Yamaha rider then offers his vision of the facts, describing in detail what happened between him and the Aprilia standard bearer: “I slowed down because Marquez was on the ground at Turn 2, there was the yellow flag, we slowed down . He slowed down a little less and overtook me at Turn 4, then I wanted to regain my position and overtook him again at Turn 5. Then from there it was going to continue for the run, but he jumped in like crazy at Turn 6, even risking knocking myself to the ground. After this, after yet another scene, I stood beside him and was telling him to stay calm, he dumped me on a pizza! This was the scene. It’s almost like dreaming to see the reaction he had, really… Not normal. But it is so”.
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Franco Morbidelli, Yamaha Factory Racing
It is not the first time that Aleix Espargaro has disproportionate reactions to episodes that could have simply been concluded with a gesture of apology or dialogue between colleagues. And Morbidelli is keen to underline this: “We should compete with each other according to the rules of the game and we should have sporting hatred towards our opponents, but not so great as to have to give up a pizza to a driver who has slowed down because ‘it was a yellow flag and that is also telling you to stay calm. But what kind of reaction is it? Does Aleix have a problem? We all think he has it. Those who work with him, those who have seen everything he has done during his career. In recent years there are more episodes of which we should be ashamed rather than episodes of which we are proud, many more.”
Briefly, Morbido then talked about his race, which ended in the rear but with the hope of improving on Sunday: “The race? After a good start, I caught him on the ground at Turn 6, so I had to go out. Then we were also trying a big edit that didn’t go well at all. The pace wasn’t bad, but after the accident I was too far behind and I didn’t recover. However, let’s go fast and see what we can do to recover.”
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