The Sky VR46 driver did not finish the first lap of the Australian Grand Prix, hit by a competitor.
The adage “never two without three” will not have worked for Luca marini at Phillip Island. After two consecutive victories in Buriram and Motegi, he had every chance of achieving a hat-trick, but his hopes were dashed on the first lap of the race.
However, the Italian had come a long way and had worked hard to achieve good qualifications. Very far behind in free practice, notably due to a fall which prevented him from achieving a suitable time to automatically progress to Q2, Marini had to go to the Q1 repechage, from which he fortunately managed to escape. At a good pace, he continued his momentum and took third position on the grid.
All hopes were therefore allowed, and the bad start to the weekend was behind him. But that meant forgetting the facts of the race and the opponents who were sometimes a little too aggressive. In the first lap, Iker Lecuona actually arrived too hard when braking and pushed the representative of the Sky VR46 team who fell, taking Marco Bezzecchi with him.
“The fall in the first lap is a real shame”, noted Marini. “We all know that turn 4 is one of the most critical points on the track and there was no need to make an entry like this, in airplane mode. I'm really disappointed, we could have had a good race and fight for the top 5. We lost a lot of points for the Championship and that's not what we wanted. »
While he had returned to the title race thanks to his two victories, despite a significant gap with the leader, all his hopes were gone, and the title will therefore be played out between Álex Márquez, Tom Lüthi and Brad Binder mainly, in addition to Jorge Navarro and Augusto Fernández who mathematically still have their chances.
