Marc Márquez finished the MotoGP Dutch GP in fourth place, but a 16-second penalty dropped him to tenth due to a violation of the front tyre pressure limit.
The Gresini rider didn’t kept the minimum (1.8 bar) for at least 60 percent of the race, as required by the rules, and was penalized – a decision he accepted: ‘It was 0.01 for one lap. It’s a shame, but the rules are the rules. The only thing we were discussing with the stewards, and for that reason the penalty was a bit delayed, is that as you’ve seen in the race I started in a good way, but then suddenly I saw that the front had something strange and then I saw the tyre pressure was super low. Then, I let [Fabio] Di Gia past just to control the front pressure, and I was there behind him all the race’.
Regarding how the infraction occurred, Márquez explained that it started with an incident involving Enea Bastianini (Ducati): ‘I was controlling in a good way, I was inside, but what I didn’t expect was the contact from Enea at turn 1. He pushed me out, and on that lap I was one second slower and I didn’t push well at turn 4 and turn 5 because you don’t know how the tyre will be after coming from the run-off area. It [the pressure] dropped again, it took two laps to come back, and those two laps put me out of the minimum, that were 15 laps today’.
For the eight-time world champion, it was a collective mistake: ‘It was a mistake of everybody. Yesterday was a mistake of everybody, and it was my mistake. But we are a team. Today I tried to control well, but it’s true that most of the Ducatis were a lot on the limit. Today was super difficult, because when is cloudy-sunshine-cloudy-sunshine, the track temperature changes like 5ºC down, up, and this makes everything difficult. Today we were very tight; I was controlling well, because I said them that if we had these situations I could control. But what I cannot control is the contact of another rider that makes me go wide, comeback, and then the pressure was too low again’.