Lorenzo: With Marc something should’ve happened before

Jorge Lorenzo believes the furore surrounding Marc Marquez’s actions in Argentina could have been avoided had MotoGP race direction acted sooner and punished some of the reigning world champion’s past aggressive actions.

The Ducati rider has long held the view that his own wayward tendencies were curbed thanks to a one-race ban he received in his debut year in the 250cc class in 2005, when he took Alex de Angelis out of the Japanese Grand Prix.

“I hope like always, it's always needed that something big or quite big happens to take big action to change something,” said Lorenzo. “This shouldn't be like that in my opinion, but life is not the way you want it to be.

“Sometimes, to change something, something big needs to happen. Looks like now we have to do something, because the actions with Marc and Aleix and Valentino, but something should have happened before.

“My position is the same, the same I have now, the same I had in 2013 five years ago: In a dangerous sport, you need to protect the rider. It's one thing to be crazy when you are making a hot lap or you are alone, it's another thing when you are putting the risk and the health of other riders.

“The referee or Race Direction should penalize strongly these actions. That's the only way the riders who make these actions stop making these actions. Because he knows that some penalty will happen to me. It happened to me in 250, I was very aggressive, and I changed completely my strategy and my point of view.

“Now, if you think riders who never made a mess, you think of [Dani] Pedrosa, [Andrea] Dovizioso, or myself, or maybe someone else. If you think of the opposite, you can also count those riders on one hand, the riders who are sometimes too aggressive.

“Finally, it's not the rider’s fault. It's Race Direction fault. If Race Direction gives hard penalties, next time the rider won't make this action, for sure. So it's always Race Direction's fault.

“Race Direction can sometimes make a mistake, like a soccer referee. But it should not be usual to make a mistake. Now I think we have to put one level more. Learning from what happened in Argentina, this is OK, it should have happened before, but OK, after Argentina, one level more.”