Fabio Quartararo blasts “suicide” lunge from Franco Morbidelli in Thai MotoGP

This weekend’s MotoGP Thai Grand Prix was one gradually decreasing drama, but one of the key flashpoints at the start of the race was the contact between Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Quartararo which saw the latter crash.

Quartararo remounted his Yamaha M1 and finished 16th, whereas Morbidelli eventually crashed out at the same corner at which he’d made contact with Quartararo after also serving a long lap penalty for irresponsible riding.

For Quartararo, the move, which he described as a “suicide attack”, by Franco Morbidelli at turn eight on lap four was the second one in that corner in two days that had affected his race, after Brad Binder put him on the exit kerb there in the Sprint.

“Turn eight, I don’t know what I did to this corner, but two times in a row two people kick me out of the race,” Quartararo said.

“Yesterday was more of a really aggressive move, but today was more a suicide attack. But, it’s the race. Unfortunately, we could not control the move from the others.”

Quartararo hadn’t seen the move back when he spoke to the media after the race in Thailand, but he was confused by what he saw as Morbidelli’s apparent desperation to make a pass on him.

“I didn’t even see it [the incident with Morbidelli],” Quartararo said, “but the speed he arrived to me in turn eight, I think he was quite far in the braking and just released the brake.

“So, I think it was a little bit too optimistic, the move, and especially this morning he was really fast — he just had to wait one straight and he would overtake me in turn three.

“There were still 20 laps more, so I don’t think it’s three more corners [behind] that will [stop] him from making the podium or the victory, so I have nothing more to say about the incident.”

Morbidelli: “I made a mistake”

Morbidelli’s view of the incident was different. Instead of a desperate lunge, the Italian explained that Quartararo had braked earlier than he anticipated and his dive to the inside was an attempt at avoidance.

“It was a big pity,” Morbidelli said. “I was trying to recover, I was really quick and I was trying to recover the starting position and I was trying to make my own way as fast as I could.

“But, actually, with Fabio [Quartararo] I made a mistake.

“I didn’t really want to overtake him, but he braked a little bit earlier than me, so at one point I said ‘Okay, I have to go in and hope that he sees me’.

“But, he didn’t. Probably I arrived too late, and we touched, and he ended up on the ground and this ruined his race, and started the downward spiral for my race.

“I had a long lap penalty and then, to recover from that long lap, I had a small tuck in turn eight and I ended up on the ground. Turn eight was really slippery, that corner today.”

Morbidelli added that mistakes had been the key thing that had undone a weekend on which he had shown decent speed and potential.

“This weekend we’ve been very quick all weekend long, but in the important moments I made mistakes,” he said.

“Yesterday in qualifying we could have started in the front row but instead we started 11th because I crashed in turn nine.

“Today, I was starting 11th and to recover from that I was [rushing too much]. So, a pity. We will learn from this and we will try to bring the same speed, but we will try to be more accurate in important moments.”