Whoopsy:

I do see Rossi looking that way, 3 times, but he is pretty much checking to see where Marquez, they are running different lines through that corner, Rossi takes the inside-out line while Marquez takes the outside-in line, Rossi knows that and needs to check where will they collide, he gets to the spot on the track first so he has the right of way, Marquez doesn't like that and head butts him. Rossi retaliate. Simply as that.

Nick, from what you are wirtting I think were you are reading it wrong is in that Rossi is not negotiating the corner normally, he is looking back to Marquez and purposedly slowing down and opening his line wide to collide with Marquez, Rossi is going out of his way to do this and forgets completely to go through the normal racing line of the curve.

The fact that makes even more obvious is that Marquez ran a little wide going in (that is why Rossi takes the insile line so easily) and so Rossi has to lift and open wide a lot in order to meet Marquez on the corner. This is why he was actually penalised, because everybody can see that this can only be done on purpose, there is no doubt about this, otherwise it would just have been a normal race incident like many times before and nobody would of given it a second thought.

Also check out this camera angle, who crosses who's line?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lOoA2q5zcg

you can see Rossi purposedly continue going straight in the corner while glancing at Marquez to be able to meet him, look at his body posture in the bike, maybe you need to have been in that situation riding bikes to interpret it but it says it all, and then once he hits marquez and throws him down, only then Rossi changes to the correct body posture  for taking the corner and tilts the bike to start turning and negotiate the turn. Up until then he had no interest in the corner, he was going after Marquez.

Marquez was taking the corner correctly and was running out of track due to Rossi causing him to lift up and not being able to negotiate the corner, until they finally collided, with the outside rider always getting the short end of the stick in that situation which is what Rossi played on.

Just look at the tire marks on that corner and the direction they are going, that shows you the racing line and look at how perpendicular and passed them they are going compared to them because of what Rossi was doing.

The only tire marks that are parallel to them are those that are going off the track from riders going wide and out  of the track in the turn. That is what Marquez was trying to avoid, and at that slow speed (Rossi had purposedly slowd down both riders in the turn)  and late in the corner, Marquez expected Rossi to be able to cut the corner and move on, but he did not expect however that Rossi was doing this on purpose so when he tryied to match Rossis expected trayectory out of the corner, he instead met Rossi and fell.

 

I really hope to describe it well but don't think I can explain it any better than that NickSmiley it's hard to judge some else's perspective if you are not into bikes since I may take some things for granted like body posture, lines, etc...


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⇒ Carlos - Porsche 991 Carrera GTS