MotoGP Motegi: Hand woes at home race for Nakagami

LCR Idemitsu’s Takaaki Nakagami heads to his home MotoGP race for the first time in three years at Motegi this weekend.

While the Honda rider is happy to be back in front of his home fans, a hand injury - sustained after a collision with fellow HRC rider Marc Marquez last weekend at Aragon - has made the forthcoming race more challenging than he would have liked.

The Japanese rider underwent surgery on Monday to repair tendons in the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand and while he has been passed fit to compete during Friday’s extended FP1 session, his participation in the remainder of the weekend remains undecided.

“To be honest, my hand is not the best feeling, of course,” Nakagami admitted on Thursday evening. “On Monday, I had surgery in Barcelona. Only a few days to recover 100 per cent.

“After the race, I understood that my hand was pretty bad, so I was expecting it will be a really, really tough home race this weekend.

“Actually, at least I got the green light for FP1 but I have to check again and we will decide to continue or stop after that.”

Reflecting on the incident that caused the injury, Nakagami was magnanimous in the part played by his colleague.

“Well, it’s difficult, I tried to overtake Marc at turn seven, and I lost the line slightly, and he tried to overtake again on the exit. He was clearly in front of me. It looks like when he activated the device the bike went to the left, in such a short time, I tried to elbow out to avoid contact but it was impossible.

“That moment I realised it wasn’t Marc’s fault, it was an unlucky racing accident.

Zero per cent I never got angry with him, it was unlucky, I got injured but this is life. It could have been worse, I hit him twice, but the first one I was