Lorenzo lashes out at Aragon
Just wait until these two are team-mates next year
Jorge Lorenzo lambasted his 2019 team-mate, Marc Marquez after Sunday’s Aragon Grand Prix, pinning the blame for his crash in the first corner on the Repsol Honda rider. Having qualified on pole, the painful high-side ended Lorenzo’s chances of handing Ducati their first ever four-in-a-row streak and instead allowed Marquez to extend his championship lead with a victory.
Hitting out at Marquez despite many putting the move down to nothing more than a racing incident with no malice from the reigning champion, Lorenzo was bitter about what he deemed to be unsporting behaviour.
He said: “From the outside, I entered the corner too fast, I leaned too much, I went on the dirty track and I crashed. But from what I experienced, I entered on the same line I’ve used for the last seven years, but Marc went to the inside very aggressively, to try to not let me make the corner, and I didn’t have any option but to go out to the dirty track. The other riders were coming and the only way I could stop myself from losing five or six positions was to open the throttle. “My crash at Misano was completely my fault, but this time Marc destroyed my race, destroyed my foot, destroyed the big possibility that I had to win, and probably also destroyed the next race in Thailand. What he did wasn’t illegal, but there should be some gentlemen’s agreements in riding, and block passes are the opposite of that. But if they don’t take action about it, then maybe I have to start doing thing that I don’t like to do.” Suffering both a dislocated big toe and a compound fracture of his second metatarsus in the fall, Lorenzo is hoping to be fit in time for the next race in Thailand in two weeks’ time. But while that’s the target, he remains unsure how long a full recovery will take.
To add insult to injury, he was confident going into the race that he could easily have taken the win – something that he was even more adamant about afterwards. “I was prepared to go fast in the opening laps and I think I could have been faster than Marc and Dovi – enough to open a gap. Looking at the pace, I think I could have had something more.” As MCN went to press, Marquez was yet to comment on Lorenzo’s allegations.