New MotoGP weekend, new chapter in the conflict between riders and MotoGP stewards. In Mugello, there were again a number of incidents in which the main actors had a completely different opinion than the rule enforcers of the premier class. A week ago, Enea Bastianini made his displeasure with the stewards panel clear when he simply ignored long lap penalties and a drive-through penalty in the Catalonia Grand Prix. Now his MotoGP colleagues are following suit.
Francesco Bagnaia: This is a clown punishment
But what happened in Mugello? Francesco Bagnaia had already clashed with Alex Marquez during training on Friday, and the factory Ducati rider was subsequently given a three-place grid penalty for holding up his colleague. Bagnaia was anything but happy with the stewards’ decision and did not mince his words on Saturday when asked about his opinion of the penalty. “It’s a clown penalty,” the Italian explained during the celebrations after the sprint race in the Parc Ferme.
In the evening, the two-time MotoGP world champion went even further. “I’m still frustrated about yesterday’s penalty, it’s just ridiculous. They announced the penalty when I was still talking to them, when I wanted to use my data to prove what happened,” said the angry sprint winner. “But at that moment the penalty had already been announced. That’s crap!”
“Nobody is happy with how things are going right now, really nobody. We simply have no consistency in our decisions,” Bagnaia said plainly. When I was in Portimao with When I collided with Marc Marquez, they said to me: If you hadn’t crashed, you would have had to do a long lap. Today, with Martin and Bastianini, that’s exactly what happened, wasn’t it? And yet there was no penalty,” said Bagnaia, referring to the lack of a penalty against Jorge Martin.
Fabio Quartararo: We are talking to a wall
“But I noticed that they are not doing a good job again. They are playing with the rules and think it is a racing incident. But what if I am fighting for the World Championship and such a situation arises? Then it would not be the same for me. So we have to understand that the system is simply not working at the moment. We have not made any progress on this issue for years,” said Quartararo.
“It should be fair for everyone. If we look at the incident between Espargaro and Zarco in Jerez… I was right behind, that was not a racing incident,” Quartararo recalled the incident, which was a dispute between Johann Zarco and the stewards. “I wanted to talk to them today, but I was talking to a brick wall. Sometimes you leave the stewards even more confused than you were before. It almost seems to me as if these people have never raced themselves.”