Honda's Dani Pedrosa has apologised to Andrea Dovizioso after taking the Italian out of MotoGP's Americas Grand Prix.
Dovizioso was running in third place behind Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo, but was wiped out by a falling Pedrosa at Turn 1, seven laps into the race.
"I feel especially bad for Andrea and want to apologise to him," said the Honda rider. "I’m glad he’s fine.
"Unfortunately, I made a small mistake – I lost the front end under braking going in to Turn 1.
"I lost control and tried to save the crash, but I ended up going down and taking Dovizioso with me. It’s a shame to have finished the race in that way."
Pedrosa ran straight over to Dovizioso after both came off their bikes, making sure he was not injured, before re-mounting his bike and continuing.
However, the Spaniard retired just a handful of laps later.
Dovizioso rues bad luck.
Dovizioso was left to rue his bad luck after being taken out for a second consecutive race – after a similar clash with his team-mate in Argentina.
“I am really very disappointed because once again today I was unable to finish my race following a mistake by another rider," said the Italian.
"Losing two possible podiums out of three is the hardest thing to accept in view of the championship.
"However I also want to look at the positive aspects: I didn’t hurt myself and given the way the incident happened it could have been a lot worse.”
Despite the setbacks, Dovizioso is confident that Ducati is moving in the right direction.
"In addition, in three different races, in very difficult situations to manage for the tyres, we have always been able to fight for the podium.
"Today we could have been second in the championship just a few points behind Marquez, so from this point of view I am very pleased with the work that we are doing.
"Even when we are not so fast in practice, in the race we always manage to be competitive: this is the way a factory rider has to race when he is thinking about the championship.”
Discussion about this post