That Moto3 rookie Romano Fenati had a temper we found about it after the Brno qualifying session when the Team Italia rider star crashed halfway through the session and ended up 13th on the starting grip.
Interviewed immediately after, Fenati accused Le Mans winner Louis Rossi of being an idiot, and having provoked the crash by widening his knee and forcing him to put his wheels on the dirty part of track, and apparently it wasn’t the first time as he also made him crash at Estoril, using same tatics.
The Italian went through a red mist moment and threatened the French rider, saying that he didn’t known whether to make him pay for it on track or wait for him outside the paddock.
At that time we chalked up Fenati’s verbal attack to youthfulness – he’s only sixteen – and the usual adrenaline rush (and the dumbness of interviewing riders immediately after an incident and hoping for some provocative words) but the young rider has gotten into another altercation, but this time it was more serious, as it involved a traffic cop in his home town of Ascoli Piceno.
According to the story that has hit the papers, Fenati and his grandfather were unloading boxes from their parked car in front of the family’s hardware store and since the street is very tight the car was blocking the street exit, until a pair of traffic cops arrived asking them to move the vehicle.
Apparently Fenati got into a verbal match with the cop, which almost came to blows – and here the two versions of the story differ – as Fenati said the cop started it because he was being delayed and when leaving with their car they ran over his foot injuring him, while the cop said Fenati scornfully told him to take another road as he starting letting the insults fly and the young rider also tried to attack him, but was blocked by two other cops.
True or not true, exagerated or not, Fenati had to go to the ER of the Mazzoni Hospital with a foot injury that could hamper his Misano weekend because he said, “my foot hurts a lot but I only have some small fractures to his tendon and I’m going to stay home for a couple of days and be on track Friday” Fenati is currently fourth in the Moto3 championship standings.