With the incident with Marco Bezzecchi under investigation, Maverick Viñales gave his version of events and explained that, in his view, he did nothing wrong and has a “notion” of what he should do in that area of the track, and it is his belief that Bezz tried to overtake again and that was what led to the joint crash.
The Aprilia rider began by talking about his physical condition, saying that ‘now’ is when the pain is starting to set in: ‘I’m sore, and now it’s starting to get worse and worse but ok… If I can race tomorrow it’s fine, we’ll see. For sure I’m fit but I want to see how I spend the night and how things develop’.
It now remains to wait for the decision of Race Direction, as he explained: ‘Basically I don’t know. Of course I gave my point of view to the stewards and everyone, and I saw obviously that it was a mistake. Let’s see what the decision is, I don’t know’.
Regarding the incident itself, Viñales leaves the decision to the appropriate authorities but made it known that on his part he did everything right, and that if there was any mistake it would have been Bezzecchi’s who tried to overtake again, or at least that is his conviction:
– I’m always aware that, in that corner when you overtake you leave the riders a few meters, because they want to come back to the slipstream but from my point of view he tried to overtake me again and that’s the feeling I have. Di Giannantonio was behind and braked at a normal point… I don’t know, it’s always the same thing: we have stewards and they have to decide, we can’t be the ones to decide.
If there is any arm damage, the Spaniard clarified: ‘Now I’m starting to have more pain, let’s see. I don’t have any bruises or damage, I just hit the nerve. It’s turning black, as you can see. I think in three or four hours I’m going to start feeling more and more [pain] and we’ll go to the clinic to analyze’.
And he concluded: ‘The problem is that I didn’t know how far the gravel was and I was waiting all the time for the gravel and it was a good job to get it out because then I had time to slow down’.