Pramac Ducati rider Franco Morbidelli has objected to the charge of irresponsible riding after his sprint collision with Marco Bezzecchi, which has left him saddled with a substantial penalty for MotoGP's British Grand Prix.
Morbidelli will serve a double long lap penalty in Sunday's race after clattering into Bezzecchi at the start of the Saturday sprint, a collision that put both of them out of the race on the spot and also effectively wrote off Raul Fernandez's race.
Both Bezzecchi and Morbidelli were shaken up by the impact, the latter limping away from the site of the incident with marshal assistance and the former heading to the medical centre - but both have avoided serious injury and are fit to continue with the weekend.
The stewards ruled Morbidelli's actions constituted "irresponsible riding causing danger to other competitors".
This incident at the start between @FrankyMorbido12 and Bezzecchi is under investigation ⚠️#BritishGP 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/cavvvZ8QPl
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) August 3, 2024
But while Morbidelli himself said he "accepts what the stewards say", the rest of his answers made it clear that 'accepting' does not mean 'agreeing' - as he highlighted a third party he felt participated in the crash.
"Something happened with Maverick [Vinales] - Maverick had a bad start, he lost many positions and then he went to brake and he stopped quite much in Turn 1," Morbidelli insisted.
"And I went to brake in a normal spot but I couldn't avoid the crash, I couldn't avoid the impact. I tried to avoid him but then I crashed."
Vinales was indeed poor off the line from the middle of the third row, arriving into the braking zone into Abbey already alongside Bezzecchi - who had started 12th, four places behind - and yet being quite tentative on corner entry, albeit not in a way that looks dramatically out of step with those around him.
Trackhouse's Miguel Oliveira had whizzed by him on the outside, yet didn't necessarily carry the right line through the corner - washing out to the outside and getting picked off by Vinales quite comfortably on corner exit.
More pertinently, with quite some distance between them still but an obvious speed mismatch, Morbidelli lost control of his bike and ended up smashing into Bezzecchi, cornering at a similar speed to Vinales but on a tighter line, on the inside of the corner.
It could be argued that by the time Vinales' corner speed levelled out with those around him Morbidelli was already long in the process of crashing, caught out by the initial speed difference.
"It was not irresponsible," Morbidelli continued. "It was unlucky.
"I didn't want to overtake anybody. I just went to brake in the normal spot - actually, if you see the images, I brake a little bit earlier than the rider on my left, which is Oliveira, but then I get sucked in by Maverick, who is on a different speed than everybody. And it's an unfortunate episode of Turn 1."
Vinales did partly corroborate Morbidelli's version of events.
"I had a massive wheelie and then the bike was completely stopped. I could not even brake, I was not even able to disengage [the ride height device - which requires hard braking and compromises corner speed if it's engaged]."
"But," Vinales added of Morbidelli, "he came 40km[/h] faster than anyone."
Morbidelli said that getting sucked in by the slipstream of the bikes ahead of him - a problem increasingly familiar due the bikes' increasing aero dependence - was part of the recipe for the incident.
"We reach corners, we reach the first corner at a very high speed, and the air suction makes a lot of difference.
"We're going at 200-something [km/h] there. And it's 20 bikes. Things like this can happen. For my vision on the episode, it's that it's an unfortunate racing incident. It's not an irresponsible riding episode at all. But the stewards have a different opinion and I accept this."
A pained Bezzecchi did not face the written press after his incident.
His press release quote simply said that he "felt a big hit and found myself in the air" and that he remains with a lot of foot pain that could influence his prospects for Sunday even if an x-ray did "rule out [major] injuries".
