Honda’s Marc Marquez says he didn’t know that Ducati’s Jorge Lorenzo had gone down on Lap 1 of the 2018 MotoGP’s Aragon GP until the end of the race.
Lorenzo had the outside line in the first corner with Marquez on the inside. In the run-up to Turn 1, Marquez left enough space for Lorenzo but the Honda rider had to brake to not overshot the corner.
This was enough to shake Lorenzo’s line as he lost control on the dirty part and had a huge high-side which dislocated his toe on the right leg and broke his arm as he now faces anxious time to get ready for the Thailand GP in two weeks time.
Marquez continued on to have a four-way fight involving Ducati’s Andrea Dovizioso and the Suzuki pair of Andrea Iannone and Alex Rins. The Honda rider eventually came on top to win the grand prix and extend his points lead to 72 with five races to go.
Post race, Marquez said he didn’t know that Lorenzo crashed out even though his team were shown to have the board ready with ‘Lorenzo Out’ message on Lap 2. “I started quite well but then when I braked at the first part I locked the front,” he said.
“Because I was in the dirty place, I said ‘ok I won’t stop the bike’ then I released the brakes to go wide, then I started to push, then I didn’t realise until I arrived in parc ferme that Lorenzo was out.”
Lorenzo, on the other hand, laid the blame straight on his future teammate. “From the outside, it looked like I entered too fast, went wide, leaned too much on the dirty part of the track and that’s why I crashed,” he started.
“From what I believe and what I experienced, I entered in the normal line to make the corner, just as I did in the last seven years here at Aragon. But I watched Marc going to the inside very aggressively and not making the corner because you saw where he finished on the green.
“When he saw I was there, he tried not to let me pass into the corner and I didn’t have any option other than to go onto the dirty part of the track. Because we were very wide and already the other riders were coming, if I didn’t want to lose five or six positions I had to open the throttle.
“Obviously I didn’t expect the that rear would slide like this or I would not have opened the throttle, I would have put the bike straight and gone outside the track. But I didn’t have any more options and, whereas in Misano the crash was completely my fault, this time Marc destroyed my race, destroyed my foot.
“He destroyed also the possibility I had to win and probably also in Thailand. I didn’t and I will not go to Race Direction, because what makes me more upset is that from the outside everyone thinks I crashed because I leaned too much on the dirty part of the track and it was my mistake.
“It was not like that and Marc knows. He didn’t leave me space, he made a block pass like in some past races and I didn’t have any options other than to crash or go outside the track,” he explained.
