Colin Edwards, Nicky Hayden and Alex de Angelis all gave their reactions to the first lap crash at Misano which immediately ended their quests for points on Sunday. There was drama early in the MotoGP contest on Sunday at Misano when home rider Alex de Angelis hit Colin Edwards at the start of the first lap, with the crash also taking Nicky Hayden into the gravel and instantly ending the race for all three riders.
Following their good performances in practice and qualifying each of the talented trio had looked well set to earn a decent points total at round 13, but it was not to be – with De Angelis accepting the blame for the crash and later apologising to both Americans.
However, Edwards was in no mood for sympathy and described De Angelis’ riding as unacceptable. The Texan fumed, “I thought I had the pace to easily be fourth and maybe fight with Dani Pedrosa for a podium but we are in Italy and occasionally you have to deal with an Italian rider who wants to be a hero and today that was De Angelis. Turn one at the start with 17 bikes is not the place to be going at race pace and he was never going to make through there. Today De Angelis is the guy who needed to be wearing Valentino’s donkey helmet.”
The Monster Yamaha Tech 3 rider continued, “I didn’t know what had happened until I was sliding through the gravel. Turn one is the most dangerous time to crash with so many bikes around you, it is unacceptable. I’ve been fighting with Andrea Dovizioso in the championship most of the season and now he has ten points on me with four races to go. That’s racing.”
Hayden, meanwhile, was similarly disgruntled and was particularly dismayed to have missed the chance to give the thousands of Ducati supporters at Misano something to shout about. The Kentuckian competitor remarked, “It’s easy to say it now but I just know I was set for a good race so I’m extremely disappointed. Maybe I wasn’t going to win but at least I could have run with the front guys for a while and given all the Ducatisti something to cheer, as well as picking up some vital experience and data for this machine.”
He added, “To be honest I had a feeling De Angelis might create some drama here. He’s at home and fighting for his job and when I saw him in the corner of my eye I just tried to gas it and get out of his way. Unfortunately he slightly clipped my rear wheel and that was the last I knew about it. I know in racing people can make mistakes and I have done plenty in my life but I’m not happy with Alex because this wasn’t racing - it was just stupid to try and pull a move like that on cold tyres, on the first lap. Anyway, we’re all okay and looking forward to Portugal.”
For his part it was a highly costly error and De Angelis has now failed to finish the race on both occasions he has ridden in his home event as a MotoGP rider, having also crashed out last year.
He ruefully stated, “I got a decent start and thought I could make some more ground up on the inside on the turn but I went in too deep. Colin cut in front of me and I braked as hard as I could to avoid him but the front folded and I hit him. Unfortunately Nicky was hit as well and I apologise to both of them. Unfortunately these things happen in racing and I am desperately disappointed because this is my home race, there were a lot of people here supporting me and I wasn’t able to deliver a good result. It is especially frustrating because we had the potential to put a really good race together here after another excellent weekend, but we’ll take the positives out of it and try to continue with our recent progress at Estoril.”
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