MotoGP, Race Direction apologizes to Bagnaia and Ducati, lap cancelled due to human error

You usually learn from your mistakes, but as for the Race Direction, we can only hope that this happens. Bagnaia, speaking to the press, lashed out at those in control: "they made a mistake and admitted it. The yellow flags were out from turn 8 to 3 without anyone crashing and they cancelled my fast lap. But it was a mistake, because the marshals didn't know how to turn off the electronic flags and turned them all on".

Pecco was referring to his first fast lap of his second exit, when he had set a time that would have allowed him to enter Q2. Then, on the following lap, he was baulked by Morbidelli.

Race Director Mike Webb took the blame and clarified what happened. “Race Direction determined that the yellow flag was incorrectly displayed on the lap Bagnaia has had cancelled. This was due to human error. We are very unhappy with this unfortunate situation and effect it has had on Pecco’s weekend,” he explained.

Webb then went into further detail: “When a rider passes a yellow flag, their lap is automatically cancelled. This affected various riders today, but unfortunately it was Bagnaia’s fastest lap of the session. Laps are cancelled due to passing a yellow flag, not necessarily because a rider passes through a sector with a crash. We cannot reverse any cancellation of a lap for any rider who has seen a yellow flag. But we can – and do – apologise to Bagnaia and the Ducati Lenovo Team for the human error.”