MotoGP Buriram: Bezzecchi ‘confused by penalty, struggled in the wet’

Mooney VR46’s Marco Bezzecchi suffered a disappointing Thai Grand Prix after the highs of a very successful Saturday.

Launching from his first pole position in the premier class, the Italian struggled to replicate his dominant dry pace in the sodden conditions of Sunday. Contact with Pramac’s Jorge Martin off the start saw the number 72 run wide at the first corner, with a one place demotion handed down by race direction.

The penalty dispatched five minutes into the race, Bezzecchi would continue to drop backwards as the action unfolded before he ultimately crossed the line just outside of the points, in 16th.

“I didn’t really understood why I got this penalty because Martin touched me twice before the first corner and he pushed me outside the track so I didn’t have nowhere to go or disappear to avoid this penalty,” Bezzecchi explained on Sunday. “So this from the race direction, I don’t really understand but anyway even without this penalty, the result will not be different.

“I didn’t felt good at all with the bike and as soon as the water drop on the track, from lap five, I start to struggle a lot with the front of the bike and I felt the front closing every corner,” he continued. “So for me it was very difficult to go faster than this. A bit disappointed of course, because after a very beautiful weekend - also this morning in the warm up I was very fast in the dry condition - but at the end is like this, with the weather you cannot do nothing.

“This weekend was positive because I was very fast and I show that I am quite competitive on the dry, not really on the wet, unfortunately,” he said of his performance at Buriram. “The positive is that we work very well and from Friday to Saturday we make a huge step. I grabbed