Fabio Quartararo criticizes Franco Morbidelli’s ‘suicide attack’ in Thai MotoGP

This weekend’s MotoGP Thai Grand Prix was a drama that gradually waned, but one of the key flashpoints early in the race was contact between Franco Morbidelli and Fabio Quartararo, which resulted in the latter crashing.

Quartararo remounted the Yamaha M1 and finished 16th, while Morbidelli eventually crashed in the same corner where he made contact with Quartararo, after also serving a long lap penalty for irresponsible riding.

For Quartararo, the move that Franco Morbidelli described as a “suicide attack” at turn eight on lap four was the second one in two days to affect his race after Brad Binder put him on the exit curb there in the Sprint .

“Turn eight. I don’t know what I did in that corner, but two people in a row threw me out of the race,” said Quartararo.

“Yesterday it was a more aggressive move, but today it was more of a suicide attack. But that’s the race. Unfortunately, we couldn’t control the movement of the others.”

Quartararo didn’t see the move when he spoke to the media after the race in Thailand, but he was confused by what he perceived as Morbidelli’s desperation to overtake him.

“I didn’t even see it (the Morbidelli incident),” Quartararo said, “but the speed he got into turn eight, I think he was quite far into the braking and he just let off the brake.

“So I think that move was a bit too optimistic, and especially this morning he was really fast – he just had to wait one straight and he overtook me in turn three.

“There are still 20 laps left, so I don’t think three more corners (at the back) will stop him from getting the podium or winning, so I have nothing more to say about this incident.”

Morbidelli: “I made a mistake”

Morbidelli had a different view of the incident. Instead of a desperate dive, the Italian explained that Quartararo had braked earlier than he expected and his dive inside was an attempt to evade.

“It’s a real shame,” Morbidelli said. “I tried to recover, I was really fast, I tried to regain my starting position and I tried to find my way as quickly as possible.

“But actually with Fabio (Quartararo) I made a mistake.

“I didn’t really want to overtake him, but he braked a little earlier than me, so at one point I said, ‘OK, I have to come in and hope he sees me.’

– But he didn’t do it. I probably arrived too late and we touched and he landed on the ground, ruining his race and starting a downward spiral for my race.

“I got a long lap penalty and then, to recover from that long lap, I went into a small corner in turn eight and ended up on the ground. Turn eight was really slippery today.”

Morbidelli added that mistakes were the key thing that ruined a weekend in which he showed decent speed and potential.

“This weekend we were very fast all weekend long, but I made mistakes at important moments,” he said.

“Yesterday in qualifying we could have started from the front row, but instead we started from 11th position because I crashed in turn nine.