Diggia furious with Race Direction: Alex Marquez's response

In the MotoGP Sprint at Buriram, the contact between Marc Marquez and Pedro Acosta wasn’t the only episode that sparked debate. Fabio Di Giannantonio was involved in a collision with Alex Márquez at Turn 3 of the Thai circuit. This time Race Direction did not intervene, but the VR46 rider disagrees and calls for tougher penalties at the start.

Despite the incident that forced him off track, the #49 Roman rider managed to recover and finish the race in eighth place, just ahead of fellow Ducati rider Pecco Bagnaia. A good result that, however, did not ease his anger; in fact, in front of the media he criticized the safety conditions at the start.

In addition to the near-incident with Alex Marquez at the beginning of the race, which caused both to run off the track, Fabio Di Giannantonio wanted to reflect deeply on rider safety in the opening laps. "In my opinion, we have seen far too many extremely dangerous situations. In racing, the first hard braking is always the most dangerous and, unfortunately, there have been cases where riders got injured—situations on the limit. If we still haven’t learned this, and I include myself, then there need to be harsher penalties in the early phases of the race to ensure there is not only the fear of getting hurt, but also of receiving a more severe penalty."

‘Diggia’ is calling for stricter oversight from Race Direction to prevent serious incidents. The MotoGP start would perhaps deserve more attention from the stewards. "In my view, all riders feel unsafe in the first corners because of other people’s risky maneuvers." At the end of the Sprint, Fabio spoke with Race Direction... "They told me they would do their job. I’m sure in the future we won’t see certain things anymore that are also harmful to the show."

This time there was no response from Race Direction, no penalty for Alex Marquez. The Gresini rider doesn’t believe he deserves a sanction. "I got a great start. At Turn 1, I ran side by side with Di Giannantonio all the way down the straight, we braked more or less at the same point. Then there was a moment when he decided to go from the inside to the outside. There was no space for me; we were side by side, I had Raúl in front and I could either hit him or run wide with him. I had no choice but to release the brakes at a certain point and go wide. Trying to defend a position on the outside didn’t make much sense."