Valentino Rossi has his say on Marquez, insists he was on hot lap

Valentino Rossi has dismissed Marc Marquez’s assertion he wasn’t going quick enough to be on a hot lap after their San Marino MotoGP qualifying fracas at Misano, saying the defending champion lost him ‘a lot of time’.

Marquez made a tight pass up the inside at the fast Turn 11 whilst trying to keep momentum during a fast final lap, catching Rossi unawares and prompting the Yamaha rider to sit up.

With Marquez running out wide, Rossi responded with a more aggressive block pass a few corners later – reminiscent of the overtake that led to their controversial 2015 Malaysian MotoGP coming together

The incident was put under investigation by race stewards, but no action was deemed necessary because both riders would have had their lap times deleted anyway because both ran off track at different points on the lap.

A misunderstanding or a point to prove?

It is for this reason that both kept pushing having seen one another ‘touch the green’, assuming the other would then slow up because of it. However, somewhat ironically, neither was aware their own lap time had been deleted by this point.

With this in mind, Rossi is somewhat evasive when quizzed about the incident but brushed off Marquez’s claim he wasn’t ‘super-flying’ enough to be on a quick lap, which is why he went for the pass.

“I exited from turn six,” Rossi told reporters, including our sister publication Crash.net. “We always exit on the wire [egde], and I didn't know if I touched the green, sincerely. I was pushing, and I think that I was not on the green.

“So I was on my hot lap, because it was my last chance. I [only] saw later on the paper that I touched the green.”

“About the problem with Marquez, I was on my hot lap, I was pushing 100 percent and he overtook me in the fast corner, in turn eleven, and already he made me lose a lot of time,” he said.

“But in overtaking me he went on the green. I tried to stay more inside to overtake him, because I expected he would slow down after being on the green, but he stayed on the line. I tried to overtake him back in the hairpin. But I arrived wide, so... in the end we lost all the chance to improve the lap time.”

Indeed, despite the conjecture, the end result was somewhat irrelevant as both would have had lap times deleted had they completed their laps. Marquez starts the San Marino MotoGP from fifth, with Rossi in seventh, whilst his Yamaha team-mate Maverick Vinales gets away from pole.