until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
Red Bull Rookies Cup championship leader Maximo Quiles has been banned from the next round of the MotoGP feeder class at the Dutch TT in three weeks' time.
The 16-year-old Marc Marquez protege, a two-time European Talent Cup champion, will sit out both races at the Assen circuit after causing a terrifying finish-line crash during Sunday’s second race in the class at the Italian Grand Prix.
The incident can be seen around the 39:30 mark in the race broadcast below.
Quiles led out of the fast final corner at Mugello and immediately started to jostle for position on the run to the line, in an attempt to cut off the slipstream of his pursuers.
He cut aggressively across the track, directly into the path of South African Ruche Moodley - sending Moodley on a collision course with Alvaro Carpe before that second impact brought the South African down.
Miraculously avoided by the oncoming machines, he walked away battered but unbroken from the fall - and Quiles, who was able to recover from the initial impact, crossed the line in fifth as Argentinian Valentin Perrone took the win.
An immediate worry given that it’s only three years since Moto3 rider Jason Dupasquier was killed at the Mugello circuit when he was struck by a following machine after crashing out, it unsurprisingly led to outrage from within the MotoGP paddock, with a number of racers calling for Quiles to be immediately punished for causing the fall.
“We are very lucky today,” factory Aprilia rider Aleix Espargaro said afterwards when asked by The Race about the incident. “It was clear, full lean in the middle of the straight.
"It’s not against him, he’s just a kid, but he has to learn. If nobody teaches him, it’s a disaster.”
With riders already warned about the dangers of aggressively changing line while exiting the last corner the day previously, something that’s also been raised this season in the JuniorGP series that Quiles also races in, the stewards took a dim view of his instigation of the crash, handing him a two-race ban to be served at Assen after being "found to have caused a crash by swerving into the line of another rider at the exit at Turn 15".
Quiles is part of the Vertical Management stable set up by Marc and Alex Marquez, and is widely recognised as one of the best - if not the best - talents in the junior ladder below the grand prix racing classes.
The 16-year-old himself was quoted as saying that he was "really sorry" about the contact with Moodley.
For now, Quiles holds on to his fifth-place finish in the second Mugello race, meaning that he now holds a slender eight-point championship lead over Brian Uriarte with eight rounds of the season remaining.
