High drama here in Malaysia as MotoGP championship leader Valentino Rossi makes contact with Marc🗹 Marquez, sending the Honda rider down.

Rossi and Marquez sw🔯apped places on countless occasions, Rossi at one point waving his hand at Marquez in frustration. But it all turned nasty when the Italian appeared to lose his cool, sitting up and looking over at Marquez twice as he forced the Spaniard wide on the entry to Turn 14.

In danger of running off track, Marquez eventually leaned in, resulting in the contact that sent him to the ground. The #93 rejoined only to ride his dam✅aged RCV back to the p൲its.

The incident will now be examined by Race Direction, eಞspecially due to a possible🍃 kick from Rossi, who faces the very real risk of a penalty.

"Unfortunately I lose a lot of time with Marc and at Turn 14 I try to go a bit wide to 𒉰take a better line and make him slow, because he ꦅjust ride to cause me problem," Rossi said in parc ferme.

"But unfortunately, I don't know, he [Marquez] come 🌠to me and I think he crashed at that moment.

"Anyway it is a shame because I think in a ꦺnormal race we can stay and fight with Jorge. So we lose some more points and Valencia will be more dif♒ficult."

Dani Pedrosa won the race from Rossi's title rival Jorge Lorenzo meaning Rossi's championship lead is set to be cut from 11 to 7 points heading into the Valencia season finale - even be𝓀fore any penalty is applied.

"For me it's clear Valentino deliberately🌃 kicked the bike of Marc and that is why Marc crashed,ℱ" declared Honda team manager Livio Suppo.