Marc Marquez explains how he avoided Hungary MotoGP sprint catastrophe
Marquez was almost collected by Fabio Quartararo at Turn 1 in the Balaton sprint
Marc Marquez has explained that he could hear Fabio Quartararo coming towards him at the start of the MotoGP Hungarian Grand Prix sprint and used that to avoid a smash.
The factory Yamaha rider triggered chaos off the line in Saturday’s 13-lap sprint at Balaton Park, as he came in too hot into Turn 1 braking on the dirty part of the asphalt.
He narrowly avoided hitting eventual winner Marc Marquez and VR46’s Fabio Di Giannantonio, but collided with Enea Bastianini’s Tech3 KTM.
Quartararo was taken out on the spot and has been served a long lap penalty for Sunday’s grand prix, while Bastianini suffered ride height device damage which led to his race-ending tangle with Johann Zarco.
Marquez went on to dominate the sprint ahead of Di Giannantonio and VR46 team-mate Franco Morbidelli to extend his championship lead to 152 points.
Talking about Turn 1, Marquez says he could hear Quartararo steaming up behind him and reacted by releasing his brakes in order to steer through the corner sharper to avoid a hit.
“I didn’t see it, but I heard it super close because I heard the engine of somebody, they told me it was Quartararo,” he told the official MotoGP website.
“When I heard that, I just released the brakes and tried to turn a little bit further.
“Just I was concentrated on my start, especially the way to release the clutch.
“I saw that the drive was good and on the brake point I go in immediately and tried to stay tight because if somebody made a mistake they would pass on the outside.
“But you cannot control this. It’s true that when it’s a new circuit, a corner like it is, as we’ve seen in the past in Aragon, Austin, even Catalunya.
“When you have a very strong brake point in the first lap, always it becomes more dangerous but we need to adjust to try to control the risk.”
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