A high-speed near-collision between Pramac Ducati’s Johann Zarco and 2022 MotoGP title contender Aleix Espargaro has highlighted the need for the Red Bull Ring s pitlane to be modified, according to the pair.
The duo were lucky to avoid contact at around 185mph in Saturday morning s FP3 session as Zarco exited the pits right into the path of Espargaro’s oncoming Aprilia.
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“He came to the garage to apologise, to say sorry, “ Espargaro explained, “and he said to me that he had no other place to go and that maybe we need to add some asphalt there in case you are exiting the pitlane and have no other place to go.
“I told him that yes, he was right, but when you re exiting pitlane you have to turn around.
“He turned around and saw me, but this means you cannot join the track. You cannot join the track when you are exiting the pits and someone else is coming at 300km/h.”
Not entirely blameless in the incident after veering towards Zarco as he closed on him, Espargaro did admit that he could have handled the moment better – but was equally quick to insist that it was Zarco’s earlier actions that had set it up in the first place.
“It’s true that I didn’t calculate well,” Espargaro said, “and I could have given him a little more space, but it’s not easy to calculate well when the bike is accelerating and you have to turn.
“Maybe I didn’t calculate it well, but the problem came from before – you cannot rejoin the track when someone is coming. He had the blue flags, I saw them.
“But hopefully we can learn and we can add some green asphalt there, then when someone is coming out of the pits they can use it.”
For his part, Zarco largely put the blame not on himself but on the track layout, with the pit exit being situated on the inside of a blind corner as riders crest the hill at the Austrian circuit s steep Turn 1.
The situation is partly exacerbated by the revised layout introduced for 2022 with a new chicane in place on the next straight before the ultra-fast left kink that follows. That means that riders are now using more of the track as they exit Turn 1.
As a result, Zarco says that there’s a natural solution to the problem: adding extra asphalt outside the track limits on the right-hand side that an exiting rider can use to stay off the racing line.
“When I went out of the pit box, I didn’t see anyone because it is kind of blind,” said Zarco.
“I opened the throttle a little bit more and then I checked again, as I always do, and I saw Aleix.
“I tried to go well onto the right, but he exaggerated a bit to stay close to me – he could have kept one metre more.
“Fortunately we didn’t touch. I thought that I could not go more on the right and I looked twice back. I didn’t want to disturb him for sure.
“I was speaking with Aleix and we said that maybe instead of the grass they can put some asphalt, green asphalt, so that when you go out of the pit box you can be sure to stay on the right and not disturb anyone.”
