Fabio Quartararo regretted the mess with Aleix Espargaró in the Dutch GP and admitted it was a "stupid, rookie mistake" that caused him to lose good points
Fabio Quartararo had everything to attack Francesco Bagnaia, pole-position of the Dutch GP on Sunday (26), as he started from second position. However, not only had the Italian already managed to open an advantage early in the race, he also saw Aleix Espargaró overtake him. And it was trying to recover his position that the Frenchman made a mistake, crashed in turn 5 and took the Aprilia driver with him. The stewards decided to punish him with a long lap, which will be paid back at Silverstone.
This was not the only crash for #20. That's because he came back into the race - he even went to the pits, but wanted to come back anyway. And, moments later, he crashed again, this time abandoning. Aleix, on the other hand, had an excellent recovery race: he left the back of the pack after the crash and finished fourth.
"I made a rookie mistake," confessed Fabio, in an interview with Canal+. "I wanted to push too hard from the start. It's from those mistakes that you learn, but it was a very stupid mistake. I wanted to race, I attacked like it was the last corner of the last lap, and at the end I made a rookie mistake. I didn't do well and ended up crashing twice in the same corner. A race to forget", he analyzed.
After the confusion, the defending champion went to apologize to Aleix, who accepted in a friendly way. With the result in Assen, the Spaniard from Granollers is now only 24 points behind Fabio, who has lost the 'fat' at the top of the championship.
"I went to apologize to Aleix [Espargaró], for ruining his race. I didn't do it on purpose, of course. But I apologize to Aprilia and to Aleix," he insisted.
"We would be leaders here anyway. But it's a shame, because we could have got a lot of points. It's time to learn from what we did wrong and forget about this race as soon as possible," he closed.