Bagnaia “more angry” with race direction than Morbidelli after Thai MotoGP yellow flag error

Francesco Bagnaia says he is “more angry” with MotoGP’s race direction than Franco Morbidelli after losing an automatic entry into Q2 in Friday practice for the Thai Grand Prix.

Factory Ducati rider Bagnaia was on a flying lap in the last minutes of the second practice session when he came across fellow VR46 academy rider Morbidelli on the racing line at Turn 5 and had to abandon his final attempt at getting into the second part of qualifying.

However, Bagnaia believes what really cost him a shot at Q2 was the race control’s decision to cancel his previous lap time because of an erroneous yellow flag.

The Italian had posted a time of 1m29.492s just minutes prior to his run-in with Morbidelli, but it was swiftly deleted after he was found to have gone quicker under the caution period.

It was initially suspected that the yellow flags were shown due to Marco Bezzecchi’s crash on Turn 3, but it turned out Bagnaia had gone through that section long before the Aprilia rider hit the deck.

Bagnaia revealed that he spoke to the race control after practice and, while the officials admitted their fault, they couldn’t reinstate the lap that would have put him ninth in the final order. He was eventually classified in 13th place and will need to progress through Q1 in order to make the pole position Q2 shootout.

“I’m more angry with race direction than for what happened with Franky, because they did today a very huge mistake,” he explained.

“They put yellow flags from corner 3 to corner 8 by mistake. Nobody had crashed there. They admitted to me, ‘okay, you are right, we did a mistake, but we cannot give to you the lap time’.

“For me it is not correct. For all the other riders it is not correct because we were speaking about it five minutes ago in the safety commission. It’s not the first time we are not in agreement with them.”

Asked how the race control justified their decision Bagnaia said: “Because it’s cancelled so they cannot give you back the lap.

“They said if we give you back the lap time we will have much more arguing with the lap time when we cancel a lap time. I said if a rider had crashed, I would have accepted it. It happened in Barcelona [actually Portimao 2021] I lost the pole position. I did my lap time, was pole position but you cancelled it for a yellow, but today no.”

The Thai GP marks Simon Crafar’s first race weekend as the chief MotoGP steward, but Bagnaia clarified that such decisions are under the jurisdiction of race control.

MotoGP race director Mike Webb issued a statement where he apologised to Bagnaia for the “human error” that prevented the Ducati rider from progressing into Q2.

“Race Direction determined that the yellow flag was incorrectly displayed on the lap Bagnaia has had cancelled. This was due to human error,” the statement read. “We are very unhappy with this unfortunate situation and effect it has had on Pecco’s weekend.

Mike Webb, Race director MotoGP

Photo by: Gold and Goose

“When a rider passes a yellow flag, their lap is automatically cancelled. This affected various riders today, but unfortunately it was Bagnaia’s fastest lap of the session.

“Laps are cancelled due to passing a yellow flag, not necessarily because a rider passes through a sector with a crash.

“We cannot reverse any cancellation of a lap for any rider who has seen a yellow flag. But we can – and do – apologise to Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team for the human error.”

Meanwhile, Morbidelli was handed a three-place grid penalty for impeding Bagnaia later in practice.

While the VR46 rider admitted the penalty was fair, he explained the “dangerous” situation he found himself in as a number of riders in front of him slowed down while marshals recovered the crashed bike of Bezzecchi in the absence of yellow flags.

“A dangerous episode actually happened to me,” he said. “I was coming in hot. When I arrived at Turn 3, they were still picking up Bez’s bike. But there were no yellow flags. But the two riders in front of me slowed down big time at Turn 4.

Franco Morbidelli, VR46 Racing Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“When I arrived at Turn 4 I saw them going five seconds slower than usual in that sector. So I also slowed down, but when I slowed down I turned back. And when I turned back, Pecco was coming straight away because he didn’t slow down because that lap time was vital to go through to Q2 for him.

“So the dangerous episode is with me, anything could have happened, I could have slowed down even more, maybe could have even touched. Anything could have happened.

“It’s a fair penalty.”