Joan Mir takes aim at MotoGP stewards after “over the limit” Marc Marquez clash

Joan Mir has taken aim at MotoGP’s stewards for the penalty they gave Marc Marquez following his crash with the Honda rider in the Thai Grand Prix.

In the closing stages of the wet 26-lap grand prix at Buriram, Marquez was fighting his way through the back of the pack after crashing out of second on the 14th tour.

At Turn 3 he made contact with Honda’s Mir while trying to overtake for 15th, forcing the latter off track. Marquez was ordered by the stewards to drop one position.

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He complied, but only after he’d overtaken LCR’s Takaaki Nakagami - therefore never ceding the position back to Mir.

Mir called the incident “over the limit”, but felt the bigger issue was the penalty handed down by the stewards.

“A bit on the limit? No. Over the limit,” Mir, who was 15th while Marquez was 11th, said.

“It was very similar as in the sprint race in Jerez. The same thing happened.

“I will not give any comment because always when I give a comment it turns in the opposite way for me. So, I’ll let you judge this thing.

“It’s true that it’s… the people that get paid for this, it’s not possible that they don’t see, that if you have a problem with one rider, then the other starts to fight and recover many positions more, and then at the end of the race you remove one position.

“And what happened with me? I lost three when you hit me. So, for sure, it’s not right how they take the decision.

“For me, the most logical thing to do when this happens - it happened a lot with me in the past when I touched somebody - [you get a] long lap.

“Long lap and you lose the positions that you probably made me lose, because when you hit me I was in the long lap. This is the logical thing.”

Marquez accepted the penalty, but defended himself by saying that he was “parallel” with Mir at the point they made contact.

Mir was enjoying one of his most competitive races of the year on the Honda until the final 10 laps when he began to suffer problems with grip.

“The thing is that something happened in the last 10 laps, I was not able to stay on the bike at all,” he said.

“We lost two seconds of performance and I don’t know why at the moment.

“It’s a shame because I put from my back everything that I could. I started from P19. In the third lap I was fighting to be in the top 10 already.

“Then about what happened in the last laps was ridiculous. I don’t understand what really happy. We will try to understand to not happen again.”