Movistar Yamaha MotoGP boss, Lin Jarvis, wants a much heavier penalty for Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez.
Following his ‘dangerous riding’ last weekend in Argentina, Yamaha was certainly unhappy with the ‘slap on the wrist’ penalties.
Marquez’s riding caused the collisions with several riders including Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro, Maverick Vinales, and Valentino Rossi.
Movistar Yamaha MotoGP leading man, Lin Jarvis, has called upon the MotoGP race direction to make sure that Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez is faced with a much bigger punishment following his actions throughout last weekend’s MotoGP round in Argentina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLBaOMCdH2I
Jarvis made it clear to everyone that he was unhappy with how the Spaniard rider raced on Sunday and even more so regarding the penalties given during the race. To recap, Marquez’s riding throughout the entire weekend caused many close calls and contacts with the likes of Maverick Vinales during Free Practice and both Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia Racing Team Gresini) and Valentino Rossi on Sunday.
According to Jarvis in a report made by MCN, “We’ve requested race direction take action in order to do whatever they can to try to bring a correction to his behaviour. His behaviour shows a total lack of respect for any other competitor on the race track. Maio Meregalli, the team director, myself and Valentino went to talk to race direction after the race to give our point of view.”
“It’s not our job to make the rules, it’s not our job to decide what action they should take, but at least we wanted to be very clear to them. It’s not only for us, we were the victim on this occasion but on the next occasion, the victim might be someone else. I sincerely hope that race direction will review this weekend well and decide if they feel it is appropriate to take action or not,” added Jarvis.
Jarvis then continued with “I don’t want to get drawn into what I think should be the course of action because that is for them to do. But I think they need to send out a message. If they agree with us that this behaviour is unacceptable, they must decide on what is the appropriate course of action to try to bring about corrected behaviour. But it’s not as if it has just started in the last couple of months, his career has shown many examples of such actions.”
A somewhat similar circumstance happened to Rossi back in 2015 in the Malaysian GP for his contact with Marc Marquez which saw him starting the final round at the back of the grid. Some said that it caused him his 10th world title when Race Direction gave that said penalty.
Repsol Honda’s boss, Alberto Puig, on the other hand, was also unhappy with Race Direction for the ‘Ride Through Penalty’ given to Marquez for all the confusion which had happened before the race started. Puig defended Marquez by saying that he was only acting on what he thought was right and the marshals did not help with the situation when his bike cut off at the starting grid.
Whatever the case may be, the experience folks in Race Direction should know what needs to be done to handle the heated situation. On the bright side, it does make for a very, VERY interesting season.
Image source: MotoGP
