Aprilia rider Aleix Espargaro hit out at the MotoGP stewards after his pair of incidents with Marc Marquez in the early stages of the Styrian Grand Prix.
Espargaro was sent wide at the first corner in the first part of the race when Marquez aggressively dived down his inside, and they had another brush at the restart following the red flag for Lorenzo Savadori and Dani Pedrosa’s crash.
In case you missed why Alex Espargaro was furious earlier #StyrianGP | #MotoGPpic.twitter.com/P6aPW4sx3f
— The Race (@wearetherace) August 8, 2021
Though Espargaro insisted his biggest frustration of the afternoon was that he subsequently had to retire with an engine failure, he said he could not understand how moves such as Marquez’s first one did not attract penalties.
“Marc is Marc. Every race in the last 10 years he overtakes like this,” said Espargaro, who had remonstrated with Marquez on the way back to the pits after the red flag.
Marquez v Espargaro should be interesting on the restart 👀🥩#StyrianGP | #MotoGPpic.twitter.com/dsDZUoqBmL
— The Race (@wearetherace) August 8, 2021
“What I want to blame is the stewards. Maybe the stewards were watching the last day of the Olympics. I don’t know, it’s difficult to understand.
“Marc can decide his actions during the race, everybody can speak if they want, but the stewards have to penalise.
“There was no room at all. He hit me on the arm and I was off the track. I could’ve made a big mess there. Let’s see if race direction will do something. Actions like this should be penalised.”
Marc Marquez v Alexix Espargaro Round II
(ft Fabio Quartararo)#StyrianGP | #MotoGP pic.twitter.com/3ibNy1sVN1
— The Race (@wearetherace) August 8, 2021
Marquez dismissed Espargaro’s complaints, saying neither incident merited stewards’ attention and the fault was shared between them across the two clashes.
“We know Aleix. If I complained about all the contacts I get, then in Holland he touched me in the last chicane and I nearly crashed. But I never complained,” said Marquez.
“Here in the first race, [Joan] Mir tried to overtake me and we had a big contact, he touched me and I didn’t complain. This is racing.
“I always try to speak honestly and it’s true that in the first race, if someone made a mistake it was me. He went a little bit wide and I went into the corner and there was a gap – and it’s natural that if you do that you lose a lot of positions.
“I went in, I didn’t expect to have such a big contact, but it was there.
“The second race was his mistake. I started better than him, I was already in a good position, on the braking point I was parallel to him.
“But he just released the brakes and went in. [Fabio] Quartararo was on the inside and we had a contact.
“First race my mistake, second race his mistake.”
Espargaro argued that penalties should be awarded based on actions rather than consequences.
“What makes me really angry is we penalise when one rider makes another one crash,” he said.
“What we have to penalise is the action. The result doesn’t matter.
“If today we had both crashed, then there would be a penalty. Because nobody crashed, no penalty.”
Espargaro is far from the first rider to criticise MotoGP’s stewarding approach this year, and he echoed others’ complaints that decisions are not fully explained and there is no communication.
“I understand nothing about their job,” he added.
“There is no communication between the riders and the stewards’ panel. Every single rider is on the safety commission, but they are not there.
“We cannot speak with them, nobody understands the penalties. It’s frustrating. We cannot win.”
