Off-track moment leads to Jake Dixon's Aragon downfall

After trimming the lap time gap from +1.6s at Silverstone to +1.3s at Aragon, Jake Dixon had high hopes of battling with some of the MotoGP regulars during his final scheduled appearance for Petronas Yamaha.

The Englishman even overtook team-mate Valentino Rossi on the opening lap of the race, but then ran wide at Turn 4 on lap 2.

Although Dixon kept his M1 upright, when he then pushed to recover the ground lost 'his hard front tyre was not quite back up to temperature' and he crashed out at Turn 9.

"Everything had been going quite well during the weekend, up to the crash in the race," Dixon said. "I felt like I didn’t have a bad first lap and I managed to stay with Rossi.

"I settled into it, but then had a moment coming out of Turn 3 on my first lap and that unsettled the bike. I went off the track on Turn 4 and Turn 5, re-joined about half a second behind everyone and tried to catch them.

"Looking at the data I didn’t do anything differently, but the hard front tyre wasn’t quite up to temperature.

"It’s something that experience obviously helps with, but it was my mistake and I want to apologise to the team.

"I want to thank the team and all the crew members for giving me this great opportunity to do two weekends on the Petronas Yamaha SRT; I’ve enjoyed it a lot."

Although yet to be officially confirmed, Andrea Dovizioso will take over the ex-Franco Morbidelli A-Spec machine from this weekend's Misano round, ahead of a full 2022 season with the heavily revised SRT structure.

Further details of the 'WithU'-backed satellite Yamaha team are expected this weekend but Petronas Moto3 rider Darryn Binder appears favourite over Moto2 team-mate Dixon to join Dovizioso next season.