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Alex Rins hit out at both Taka Nakagami and at MotoGP’s stewards following the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello, after the Suzuki rider’s race ended in contact with the LCR Honda racer.
Nakagami escaped without sanction from the incident, a move that left Rins further infuriated with MotoGP’s oft-criticised stewards.
Rins attempted an overtake on Nakagami on the previous lap that didn’t work, forcing him to set up the move properly the next time round.
Going for a block pass into the Palagio left-hander, he succeeded in going up the inside of the Honda cleanly.
However, Nakagami, going wide as a result, then held his own line on the exit of the corner, colliding with Rins and causing the Spaniard to fall.
With Nakagami escaping intact himself and going on to finish eighth without penalty for the incident (which happened off-camera but was captured on circuit CCTV), that left a fuming Rins to rage against both the move and the subsequent decision.
“Sincerely, I don’t understand what he did,” he said.
“I saw the video, and sincerely, he was out of the line. The lap before, I tried to overtake him in the same corner, between 10 and 11 [Scarperia/Palagio], so the next lap I tried to push a little bit more with the throttle to be more in front of him.
“He was on the outside and when we did the corner, he was there and we impacted.
“I don’t understand the decision of the stewards, because they said that I was not in front of him and that they would not penalise him.
“If you ask the riders he’s one of the most dangerous guys on track in overtakes.
“But it is what it is and we were lucky that there was no one behind us. Jorge [Martin] was at 0.5s and he could avoid an impact with me.”
It’s not the first time that Nakagami has come under fire recently for his aggressive tactic in races, with Rins’ Suzuki team-mate Joan Mir also highlighting how aggressive the Japanese rider was in the opening laps of the Argentine Grand Prix last month following contact between the pair there as well.
And while the collision between him and Rins on Sunday could be dismissed as a racing incident, the Suzuki rider insisted that there was more to it than that thanks to Nakagami ignoring the basic etiquette of racecraft – something that he believes past world champion and current FIM chief steward Freddie Spencer should be able to acknowledge.
“I didn’t speak with Taka, but it’s something to comment about in the safety commission,” Rins added, “because clearly the stewards do not do the right work.
“I went there to speak with Freddie Spencer and I said ‘mate, you are an ex-rider, you did a lot of overtakes.’
“There is no regulation in the book about closing the throttle when a rider overtakes you, but it’s just a thing with the riders.
“Look at [Marco] Bezzecchi, [Johann] Zarco overtook him there with no problem.
“So I don’t understand why Taka made this. It was super, super dangerous. We are in MotoGP and we don’t race like this.”
Nakagami spoke to the media directly after the race and made no reference to the incident with Rins, and his LCR Honda team refused to comment when asked later by The Race.
