Joan Mir Furious After Being Taken Out by “Missile” Alex Marquez
Joan Mir has hit out at Alex Marquez after his race was ruined by having the Gresini Ducati stuck to his Honda
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It’s hard enough to ride one MotoGP bike and keep it on the track when doing the speeds they do, never mind doing so when another is attached to your rear tyre and not letting go.
That’s exactly what happened to Mir at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix as contact with Alex Marquez resulted in the latter crashing, while his GP23 Ducati got stuck to Mir’s Honda.
Lap one is always congested in a MotoGP race and often leads to crashes - seven days ago in Mandalika Jack Miller caused a four-rider pile-up to back that statement up - but rarely do we see incidents like this.
As a result of having another MotoGP bike stuck to his wheel, Mir had no choice but to run into the gravel before coming to a slow tip-off, which ended his race.
Mir was left furious as you can imagine, because he did nothing wrong. The Honda rider then went on to call Marquez a “missile” when blaming his fellow Spaniard.
Es.motorsport reported Mir as saying: “In Turn 11 Alex went long, and going into Turn 12 he hit me from behind, without thinking, almost like a missile. You have to think a bit more on the bike. It's free to ruin other people's races. I'm more angry about the sporting result than about getting hurt.”
During his media debrief, Mir shifted his frustration towards Race Direction, who last week awarded no penalty to Miller but have given Marquez a long lap penalty for the next round in Australia.
“I'm waiting for Race Direction [the stewards] to make a pronouncement - they may be sleeping or eating,” said Mir. “I was doing well, I was making a comeback until Alex decided to end my race.”
“This is not a racing incident. When you have a driver in front of you and you hit him without thinking, it's not a simple racing incident.”
Race Direction reviewed the incident after the race and this was its final verdict on the clash between Mir and Marquez.
“Following the Penalty Protocols issued to teams, this action was deemed to be an incident of Type MGP-CC4: Causing a crash. Contact with another rider resulting in another rider crashing. As a first offence for the season, the appropriate penalty in this case is a Long Lap Penalty.”
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