MotoGP World Champion Jorge Lorenzo has spoken out about the clash between he and Marco Simoncelli on lap one at Assen’s Dutch TT on Saturday.

Lorenzo delivered a true champion’s performance after being cause to crash on the first lap by Simoncelli.

Lorenzo quickly remounted and charged from the back of the pack through to claim an impressive sixth place finish and salvage valuable championship points from the unfortunate incident.

“Of course Simoncelli doesn’t want to throw me off the track, that wasn’t his intention but I think he is not very conscious about the risks in this class with these tyres,” the Spaniard said.

“I thought he learnt from the past and the polemic he created with Dani [Pedrosa] but it’s clear he hasn’t learnt. The good thing is that we finished in sixth and took some points. I was fast with a good pace.

“The championship is now more difficult so we have to go all out to win races and go fast.”

Gresini Honda’s Simoncelli admitted that he made a genuine error on cold tyres during the opening lap, crashing and taking Lorenzo with him.

“In this race you can’t put it all down to bad luck, but the truth is that I was very naive,” the Italian said. “It was the first left-hander, the asphalt was cold and, although I don’t think that I went in too hard to get past Lorenzo.

“I felt that I couldn’t hold back because I was third and close to the front two. There was time though, and I could have waited. I am unhappy to have caught Lorenzo up in my crash and can only apologise to him.”