Nine-time World Champion Valentino Rossi has been handed a licence penalty point by MotoGP race director Mike Webb after getting in team-mate Jorge Lorenzo’s way during today’s second qualifying session at Misano.
Rossi apologised to Lorenzo immeditately afterwards, which Lorenzo accepted and said it was not such a problem as he was already a second behind his best lap anyway, so it didn;t hold him up too much.
Yes, I saw Jorge and I tried to stay on the way for give him some problem. It’s a joke. I’m sorry, it’s my mistake. But I look at the screen for understand how much seconds, if I have time to do another lap,” said Rossi, speaking at Misano.
“But I don’t see very well and I try to push but on the screen before the hairpin I saw that Jorge and I understand that he was behind me but I think that he was a little bit more fast so I try to escape from the lap. But unfortunately I give to him some problem. I’m happy that anyway he is in the pole position so noting change. It was a mistake. I already said sorry. I didn’t see him.”
Lorenzo said: “I thought I was faster but finally I saw on the replay that I was one tenth slower. But because I make a mistake in the previous lap with the throttle in the last corner, maybe I could improve in this sector a little bit. I wasn’t so fast because the front was closing. Finally I could equal the lap time probably or improve just very small. Vale was there but he said sorry afterwards. It’s okay. It could happen. It happened to me in the past with some other riders. So it could happen.”
