Yamaha: Marquez behaviour shows total lack of respect

Lin Jarvis, Yamaha’s managing director, revealed he requested MotoGP race direction to 'take action' against Marc Marquez to prevent further episodes like those witnessed throughout Sunday’s dramatic Grand Prix of Argentina.

“Totally unacceptable” was Jarvis’ means of describing the move Marquez put on Movistar Yamaha man Valentino Rossi which led to the Italian crashing out of the race with just two laps to play.

Jarvis, Rossi and team coordinator Massimo Meregalli visited race direction after the race to make their feelings on Marquez's strategy known, with Jarvis stating this was just the latest in a line of dangerous moves pulled by the world champion.

“I think it’s pretty obvious from anyone watching the TV images that it’s a move that is totally unacceptable,” said Jarvis. “So it was the number X of many moves that were unacceptable throughout the weekend. We had issues in free practice when he very nearly missed Maverick one time.

“There have been several incidents against other riders – not our riders – but other riders throughout the weekend. In the race there was a big one with Aleix. There was another one with Nakagami and then with others. Finally he ran Valentino off the track. That’s just not acceptable – period.”

On their trip to race direction, Jarvis said, “Well, we’ve requested them to take action in order to do whatever they can to try to bring a correction to his behaviour. His behaviour shows a total lack of respect for any other competitor on the race track.

“So we went – Massimo Mergalli, the team director, myself and Valentino – to talk to race direction after the race to give our point of view. It’s not our job to make the rules. It’s not our job to say what action to take.

“But at least we wanted to make it very, very clear to them our opinion. It’s not only for us. We were the victim on this occasion but on the next occasion it will be someone else. So I sincerely hope race direction will review well this weekend and decide whether it’s appropriate to take action or not.”

Asked what he felt would be relevant action, Jarvis did not want to go into specifics, but believes race direction must 'send a message' to deter any further instances like this. “I don’t want to get drawn into it,” he said. “For them it’s their thing to do. I think you have to send out a message.

“If they agree with us that this behaviour is unacceptable, they must decide what is the appropriate course of action to try bring about corrective behaviour. It’s not as if it’s just started in the last couple of months. I think his career has shown many examples of such actions.”

Pressed on his opinion of the start procedure which saw the race delayed by twenty minutes as every rider left the grid, Jarvis said, “Again, honestly I don’t really want to enter into that discussion.

“They obviously took whatever actions they felt were appropriate at the time to reorganise the grid. It looked like Jack was the master of the day, being the only one bold enough to go out there on slicks.

“I think if anybody would’ve been peeved about the solution, it would have been Jack because he had a potential advantage of ten seconds while the others were still in pit lane, which was taken down to 40 metres at the end of the day. I think it was pretty harsh on Jack.

“Did it project the right image of the sport? No, definitely not. I wouldn’t say that we should be proud of ourselves for the image. But it was very, very peculiar circumstance. In reality 95% of the grid decided to exit and obviously the rules were never taken anticipating that 95% of the grid would start from pit lane.

“So I think they did what they thought would be appropriate. For us as a team possibly it helped us even. But again, they had to take a decision on the spot and that’s one that they took.”