Valentino Rossi reacts to Marco Bezzecchi ban after Brno controversy

While Bezzecchi has sinced issued both a public and private apology to the marshal in question, the incident has still sparked uproar among many motorsport fans. The current championship leader was handed a race ban for Sunday's race, allowing Marc Marquez to capitalize and reduce the points gap to just 40 heading into the Assen weekend.

The incident occurred on Saturday during the sprint race, which Bezzecchi crashed out of around two-third of the way through. It was his fourth crash during sprints this year, highlighting a big weakness for the Italian as he continues to chase his first MotoGP title. Having slid out, Bezzecchi was then seen running over to marshals and pushing them away, seemingly insensed over a mishandling of the bike, and then slapping one of them in the face with relative force.

While the marshal was clearly unharmed by the incident, it was still a shock to many and immediately drew an understandably severe punishment. Now, in the wake of the race, many people including Rossi have spoken about it.

Bezzecchi's close friend and current Ducati rider Francesco Baganaia described the punishment as 'harsh', emphasizing the stress riders are under, particularly in the immediate aftermath of a costly crash.

"I don't want to get into the sanction against Bezzecchi. I know him very well, I perfectly understand how nervous a rider can be when he crashes, in a situation like yesterday's. It doesn't justify the aggression, but not letting him race is a bit harsh." said the two-time World Champion.

Valentino Rossi echoed the sentiment and appeared in disbelief over the verdict to ban the Aprilia man from even starting in Sunday's Grand Prix:

"I think that Marco did a mistake but, sincerely, I didn't expect that he couldn't race. But it is like this." said 'The Doctor'

Aprilia's CEO Massimo Rivola, who lodged an appeal to protest the incident on the grounds that the bike was being dangerously mishandled by the marshal in question, also expressed his disappointment in the entire affair:

"First of all, we want to apologise to the marshal. Second, we accept the penalty. We don't tolerate this kind of behaviour." He said, "The reason why we appealed at the beginning was that we felt the disproportion from the action to the penalty according to what we saw in other cases, similar cases in the past.

"But that's it. Now we look forward to Assen."