AUSTRALIA: Home favourite Jack Miller seemed settled comfortably in the lead group in the Australian MotoGP before he was taken out on lap nine by Alex Marquez.
Miller was making his first appearance on home soil as a factory Ducati rider. Marquez out-braked himself into the hairpin at turn 4, the very corner that was renamed in Jack Miller’s honour on Saturday.
Alex Marquez lost control of his bike and crashed into Miller’s Ducati, sending himself and the Australian tumbling off their bikes and out of the race.
Looking back, Miller said he was oblivious to Marquez coming in hot. He was just about to get on the accelerator in the middle of the hairpin when the impact happened.
He felt there wasn’t anything he could have done. “One minute I was looking at the back of (Marco) Bezzecchi’s bike, the next minute I was seeing stars,” quipped the Australian rider.
Although he was initially miffed with Marquez, he doesn’t have hard feelings about the incident, which he feels was purely a mistake. But Miller feels devastated as he didn’t finish his race.
He visited his family and friends, who were based near the Phillip Island circuit for the Australian MotoGP weekend, to apologise for the non-finish in his first home Grand Prix in 3 years.
Alex Marquez accepted full blame for the incident, and he said he understood Miller’s anger at the time.
In an interview with the media after the race, Marquez apologised to Jack and his team, saying he had all the reasons to be angry.
He admitted that he had made a mistake when he was trying to attack a little bit more after he kept getting overtaken.
He was handed a long lap penalty for the crash, which he will serve during the Malaysian MotoGP next weekend.
Marquez was trying to get past Luca Marini when he braked late in an attempted dive bomb, which backfired spectacularly.
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