Rossi: 'The problem is Zarco'

Valentino Rossi hit out at MotoGP rookie Johann Zarco after he was forced wide when the French rider attempted a pass in the Grand Prix of the Americas.

Rossi ran off track and re-joined ahead of Zarco, who remained in fourth place on the Monster Tech 3 Yamaha, but slightly closer to Marc Marquez in front.

The Italian rider received a penalty of 0.3 seconds to be added at the end of the race, which was the amount of time he gained by straight-lining the corner.

Race Direction said Rossi could have avoided the penalty if he had backed off by the same amount, once he returned to the track.

The 38-year-old, who eventually finished runner-up behind Marquez, felt a penalty was 'not right' given he didn't trigger the incident.

But while Rossi could also accept the punishment purely in terms of gaining time, he had strong feelings on the cause of the incident itself, stating 'the problem is Zarco'.

"For me it is not right because I have two choices. We do like this, or we touch and we crash. But I hear the penalty is for gaining advantage and 0.3 is OK, but for me the problem is not Race Direction, the problem is Zarco," Rossi said.

"He is always very fast and rides the bike very well, he has great potential, but this is not Moto2 and if you want to overtake you have to overtake in another way. He always arrives too much in the line and for me, he has to stay more quiet."

Rossi was unaware of the penalty during the race and revealed afterwards that his team decided against putting the information on his pit board because he had already opened a big enough gap over Dani Pedrosa by the final laps.

"It's always very difficult because at the end we don't have any communication and you have to see just on the board. My team wait and when I overtook Dani, I was able to take a good gap in the first two sectors - one second - so they say it is not important.

"If you put on the board 'penalty, 0.3', maybe when I pass I see 'penalty 3' and maybe it is seconds or tenths, and I push at the maximum on the last lap for take more advantage and I can do some mistakes, so for me they make the right decision."

In the post-race press conference, race winner Marquez said aggressive riding was part and parcel of MotoGP.

"The penalty, 0.3 or 0.2, is not much. Of course I see the action and it was aggressive, but in the end, and in the beginning, everybody is pushing 100 per-cent. I'm an aggressive rider, Valentino is an aggressive rider and we also overtake in the past very strong, and we will overtake in the future really strong," said Marquez.

"So if you're aggressive and you overtake strong, you need to understand that the other riders are aggressive and it's always like this - it's racing. Yes it was tight and aggressive, but he didn't gain nothing, Valentino."

Pedrosa was made aware that Rossi had picked up a penalty via his pit board. But the Repsol Honda rider said he was not in a position to push any harder after his tyres went off and admitted the exact nature of the 'penalty' was also unclear to him.

"I only saw on the board 'penalty' but anyway at that time I couldn't really do anything else because I was fighting with my tyre, but 0.3 penalty I don't think it is necessary to know unless I was there fighting for last lap attack to the last corner.

"I only saw penalty and I didn't know which type of penalty it was: if it was ten seconds or one position, so it was like it was. But communication: I think if you want to communicate with the board, you can, but sometimes you don't see exactly what is showing on the board."

Zarco finished the race in fifth.