A broken piece of Fabio Quartararo’s bodywork from Marc Marquez’s first crash at Aragon caused his second, the six-time MotoGP champion has explained.
Marquez got hit twice on Lap 1 of the Aragon Grand Prix, the first of those when he shut the throttle to save a moment exiting Turn 3 and left Quartararo with nowhere to go.
That shunt took ‘El Diablo’ down but also left a piece of his Monster Energy Yamaha stuck in the #93 Repsol Honda, which caused the rear ride height device on the RC213V to malfunction as Marquez negotiated Turn 7.
Honda stablemate Takaaki Nakagami hit the Catalan’s wayward motorcycle in similar fashion and he too was down and out of the race before reaching the end of the second sector.
Marquez himself did not make it much further, bringing about an early end to his comeback grand prix by pitting that lap.
“I felt something strange in Turn 5 and I said, ‘What’s going on?’” he recounted.
“But when I went into Turn 6, 7, I felt okay.
“Then in Turn 7, Nakagami overtook me on the inside and went wide.
“So, then I was inside of him, already a little bit in front, and I engaged the holeshot [on exit].
“As soon as I engaged the holeshot, I felt like the rear wheel was locking.
“I checked very carefully the images, and you can see that a piece [of bodywork] is going out from the fairing.
“And then when I felt it was locking, everything became crazy, and the bike had that rear lock, going to the left side, and no torque.
“After that incident, I retired, but I didn’t retire because of the Taka incident, I retired because of the Fabio incident.
“Both actions were very unlucky for everything.”
On the initial incident, Marquez explained, “I had a small moment, which you have many times with a cold tyre.
“I lost the rear a little bit and closed the gas, but it was not a very big moment.
“I saw the images and the problem is that Fabio was super close, as is normal at the start.
“So it was a race incident, and very unlucky.”
While, contrary to appearances, Marquez did not deliberately squeeze Nakagami for room, he was nevertheless apologetic to both the Japanese rider and Quartararo.
“I spoke especially with Taka’s team and apologised, because it was a real mechanical problem but if you just see it from outside, it looks like I went straight into Taka,” he noted.
“Later I will try to speak with Fabio, who was in the Clinica Mobile, also with Taka.
“My apologies to him and Fabio.”
Marquez and Quartararo escaped serious injury, despite the latter also being involved in a head-on scooter crash as he got a ride back to the paddock, but Nakagami is in doubt for the Japanese Grand Prix, this coming weekend.
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