Jorge Lorenzo says Marc Marquez “destroyed his race” and “destroyed his foot”, after the Ducati rider crashed at Turn 1 on the first lap of the MotoGP Aragon Grand Prix.
Lorenzo started from pole in Sunday's 23-lap race at Aragon, but did not make it past the first corner after suffering a highside crash having been slightly off line.
The Ducati rider suffered a broken and dislocated toe on his right foot in the accident, and will be in a cast for at least 10 days, while his participation in the upcoming Thailand Grand Prix is uncertain.
Lorenzo – who will partner Marquez at Honda next year – believes Marquez deliberately forced him wide at Turn 1 and left him no option but to open the throttle early, and feels the championship leader “destroyed my big possibility to win”.
“From the outside [it looks like] I entered too fast, I leant too much and I entered too much in the dirty part [of the track], that's why I crashed,” Lorenzo explained.
“From what I live, from what I experience, I enter in the normal line in the corner as in the last seven years in Aragon, but I watch Marc going to the inside very aggressive, not making the corner because we saw where he finish in the green [run-off], and when he saw that I was there he tried not to let me past in the corner.
“I didn't have any options to go [but] to [go to] the dirty part, and because we were very wide and the other riders were coming, I didn't want to lose five or six positions, I have to open the throttle.
“Obviously I didn't expect that the rear was like this, if not I would not open the throttle like this, I would put the bike straight and go outside the track.
“But I didn't have any more options. In Misano, the crash was completely my fault.
“This time Marc destroyed my race, destroyed my foot, destroyed my big possibility to win, and probably also Thailand race.”
Lorenzo says he did not take the matter up with Race Direction and has no intention to, and says Marquez “doesn't care” about other riders.
“I think that Marc is not new to this sort of action: he doesn't care about other riders and he knows it all too well.”
He added: “I didn't go [to Race Direction] and I will not go, because from the outside one of the things that makes me more upset is from the outside everyone thinks that I crashed because I lean too much in the dirty area and was my mistake, and is not like that.
“Marc knows, he didn't leave me space, he make a another block pass like in the past in some races and I didn't have any more options than crash or go outside the track.”
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