The anatomy of the crash was
somewhat complex and depended
to a point on who was telling the
story. According to Martin, div-
ing for the inside in his quest
to
push forward from the
fourth row of the grid, the first
contact was when Quartararo
touched Vinales, himself turn-
ing in sharply, trying to make up
for
a bad start. Quartararo then
bounced into him.
This triggered mayhem, with
Bezzecchi sent flying through the
air in a scary forward roll. Martin's
Pramac Ducati teammate Johann
Zarco also fell, as did perennial
luckless innocent victim Miguel
Oliveira, while Quartararo, Vinales
S
everal people thought Jorge
Martin was not so much a
dastardly perpetrator of the
first-corner mayhem in the
Sprint race at the Austrian GP,
but another innocent victim.
The most vehement
was Jorge Martin himself,
squeezed in an elbows-out melee
off the start line. Leader of the op-
posing point of view was Marco
Bezzecchi,
the most spectacular
of five victims of the clash. An in-
cident, by the way, all too frequent
at the
deceptively simple and very
fast Alpine circuit, where turn one
funnels a full grid from high speed
into a fierce right-hander, only a little
less acute than 90 degrees.
P120
CN II IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
Marco Bezzecchi
hits the deck at the
start of the Sprint
race in Austria.
PHOTO: GOLD & GOOSE
