'He better watch the TV, I did nothing wrong' - Quartararo hits back at Miller

MotoGP world champion Fabio Quartararo has hit back at Jack Miller's criticism of the French rider following early race contact, saying: 'I don’t care! I don’t care because he’s the one in the past that has some aggressive moves. I think my move was also not aggressive.'

Robert Jones

20 Mar 2022

Fabio Quartararo , MotoGP race, Indonesian MotoGP, 20 March 2022
© Gold and Goose Photography

After making a strong start to the first Indonesian MotoGP race since 1997, Fabio Quartararo slipped as far back as sixth during the opening few laps.

However, the French rider then started to find performance that not only allowed him to challenge those ahead of him, but also become the fastest rider on-track during the closing stages.

Before making his recovery back to second place, Quartararo was involved in an early race scrap with Miller which saw the Ducati man initially get the better of the current world champion.

But after getting through on the Yamaha rider, Miller felt a significant touch to his right side, claiming Quartararo aimed for his front tyre.

Miller said: “Well it wasn’t a fight. I just passed him and he rode his motorcycle into the side of my leg. Quite clearly like he did to Johann [Zarco].

“I don’t think it’s necessary when someone passes you to immediately accelerate towards their front tyre. I will quite happily have a word with him about this because it’s not on.

“As we saw with Johann, you pass ‘okay, that’s fine’, the Yamaha turns well ‘okay’, but that doesn’t mean you open the gas and aim for the front tyre.

“I don’t think that’s fair. He rode into the side of my leg and I clearly had better pace at that point in time.

“I came from ninth on the grid and was faster than him. It was just an unnecessary risk at that early stage of the race to be running in my leg.”

While Miller was angered by the actions of Quartararo, the 22 year-old had a very different take on what happened.

Quartararo hit back saying: "I don’t care! I don’t care because he’s the one in the past that has some aggressive moves.

"I think my move was also not aggressive, just I didn’t expect to touch. My touch was not something big, it was a really small touch and I don’t know if he watched on TV, but he better watch because I did nothing wrong.

"He was talking to me on the bike but I couldn’t hear anything. He was not happy. I didn’t make any strange moves.

"He overtook me in turn one and I saw he was going wide and I just crossed the line.

"I would also like to have the comments from other riders on if it was a non respect move or not. From my point of view, if I make a bad move I say sorry, but that one I have nothing to say."

Despite the incident, Quartararo produced arguably his best ever wet race in MotoGP, one that moves him up to third in the championship behind Enea Bastianini and Brad Binder.

"This result is super great. When you expect a dry race and make basically all the weekend with an amazing pace, you feel so great.

"Also the 20 laps for us was a bit better because when we have tyre degradation we miss a bit of acceleration.

"Seven laps less was better for us and we could push from the beginning until the end. I felt my pace in the dry was really strong.

"But I found something in the wet. I always asked to have more rear grip and here it was amazing.

"It took me time to realise that I could go that fast on the wet. I saw that I was in P5 and felt I could do a bit better than that result. Super happy to be in this position."