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Takaaki Nakagami has apologised for causing the shocking crash at the first corner of the Catalan MotoGP.
The Japanese rider lost the front of his Honda under brakes and took both Francesco Bagnaia and Alex Rins down with him.
Bagnaia remounted and rode back to the pits to retire, before partaking in testing on the following day, but Rins remains in doubt for the German MotoGP due to a fractured wrist.
Nakagami himself had a lucky escape, cleared of serious injury despite it being his own head hitting Bagnaia’s rear tyre which caused the Ducati Lenovo Team entry to crash.
He took to Twitter, with a photograph from his hospital bed in Barcelona, to apologise to the Italian and Spaniard whom he felled.
“First of all, I want to apologize to @Rins42 @suzukimotogp, and @PeccoBagnaia @ducaticorse for the accident at turn 1,” wrote the Idemitsu LCR rider.
“I’m really sorry destroyed your race.
“It was a scary one but fortunately I’m OK, no serious injury. I’ll try to recovery [sic] asap.”
Nakagami was not penalised for the crash, which stewards deemed a racing incident.
“The FIM MotoGP Stewards reviewed the Turn 1 incident between riders Takaaki Nakagami, Alex Rins and Francesco Bagnaia from every angle,” MotoGP advised by way of a statement.
“On the evidence provided by the multitude of angles available to the Stewards, including footage from the helicopter, it was judged a racing incident with no further action to be taken.
“Nakagami gained a number of positions in acceleration to move forward from his grid position. He was judged to have braked at a similar time to riders around him, gaining no significant distance on the brakes to indicate otherwise.
“Rider #30 then lost the front end and crashed, with motorcycle and rider thereafter making contact with Rins and Bagnaia.
“The established threshold for such incidents to incur a penalty is for a rider to clearly be seen carrying much too much speed, with no reasonable expectation of making the corner.”
The German round takes place at the Sachsenring from June 17-19.
