Marini: Bagnaia incident ‘shocking', 'My helmet was full of oil'

Just moments after a four-rider pile-up had taken out Marini's VR46 team-mate Marco Bezzecchi, race leader and reigning champion Bagnaia was thrown from his factory Ducati.

The Italian landed in the path of Brad Binder, whose KTM was already spraying fluid after being damaged by debris from Bagnaia’s bouncing bike.

Miraculous, following hospital checks, it was announced that Bagnaia had escaped without any fractures.

Marini, who rode from 16th to 11th after the restart, said: “Yeah, quite difficult [mentally] because it involved Pecco especially. We have a very good friendship.

“It was quite shocking, his incident, when I watched the replay on TV. But fortunately, I knew that he was OK. Nothing huge [injuries]. So this was the most important thing.

“But apart from this, I think we are also professional riders and we are able to switch our minds and come back in a good mindset to make another start. Also because [this kind of thing] happened in our career many times.”

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“I don't know what happened, but from Pecco’s bike or Binder there was a lot of spray. My helmet was full of oil and I changed it,” he added.

“Fortunately, for the second start everything went fine.”

In terms of his own race, Marini’s result was conditioned by a poor qualifying and then a bad restart.

“I made my worst start of the season maybe, but this weekend I was not so strong in the starts. I don't know why,” he said. “Then I was fighting with all the other riders, but I'm quite slow in acceleration.

“And also with these wings and everything, when you stay in the slipstream of another rider, you lose a lot in the first part of acceleration.

“For me that I'm not so fast in the straights [anyway]. So it was a complicated race, was impossible to overtake other riders and then when you make all the race behind other riders, the pressure of your front tyre goes [up].

“So it's difficult then also to brake, stop the bike, entering the corners, it’s something that builds up a disaster race. A lot of things together, that if you can start 6th, nothing happened and maybe you finished 6th with my same pace.

“Now MotoGP is like this. We know and this is one of the reason also because everybody risks so much at the first corner. Because then it's impossible to recover.”

Marini now heads to his and the VR46 Ducati team’s home Misano round holding seventh in the world championship.