Aleix Espargaro told Johann Zarco “you need to have more respect”
"To avoid the contact I locked the front and I crashed"
Aleix Espargaro was “unhappy” with the manner of his scrap with Johann Zarco at the Spanish MotoGP.
Their battle last weekend at Jerez ended when Espargaro locked his front wheel at Turn 5, on Lap 10, causing him to crash into Zarco.
But Aprilia’s Espargaro was left annoyed by the LCR Honda rider for their repeated contact beforehand.
"I was very unhappy,” Espargaro was quoted by Motorsport.
“Because I said to Johann ‘we are in P14, he hit me three or four times, you need to have more respect’.
"He said ‘it's my way of riding, overtaking like this’.
“Okay, it's not my way of riding. This is why to avoid the contact I locked the front and I crashed.
"Because the easy thing for me at that corner was to touch him a little bit. “We saw that [on Saturday] no penalty coming in this. But it's not my riding style.
"I don't want to do that. I locked the front to avoid the contact.
"This is what I said to Johann. And he said ‘okay, I understand you’.
“But then Johann was really angry with all the race direction panel for other actions of [Saturday] and he doesn't hide the emotions."
The FIM stewards ruled the Espargaro-Zarco clash as a racing incident.
But it didn’t stop Zarco slamming the stewards afterwards.
Zarco told Freddie Spencer, head of the FIM stewards panel, that “he is not good for this job”.
The French rider insisted “he was looking at me like he wanted to know what I wanted. He wanted for me to complain about Aleix”.
