Alvaro Bautista hits out at Jonathan Rea after collision in race two at Magny-Cours in France

Bautista crashed out after Rea made contact with the Ducati rider on lap two, resulting in the Northern Ireland man receiving a long-lap penalty for ‘irresponsible riding’.

Reigning champion Toprak Razgatlioglu went on to win the race and complete a Sunday double on the Pata Yamaha after seeing off Bautista’s Aruba.it Ducati team-mate Michael Ruben Rinaldi, with Axel Bassani finalising the top three on the Motocorsa Racing Ducati. Rea brought his Kawasaki home in fifth place.

Bautista won Saturday’s opening race after Rea and Razgatlioglu crashed in separate incidents, while the former MotoGP rider finished as the runner-up in Sunday’s Superpole race behind Razgatlioglu, with Rea on the rostrum in third.

He now leads the championship by 30 points from Razgatlioglu after seven rounds, with Rea a further 17 points behind in third.

Speaking after race two, Bautista accused the six-time champion of intentionally taking him out of the race.

“I think it is very clear and you can watch on TV what happened,” Bautista said.

“Jonathan did an irresponsible manoeuvre and he hit me, and I crashed. Especially coming from great champion like him, I think it is not the best way to beat other riders.

“We battled in the past and I never seen this before. It’s incredible how a big champion like him does this.

“Doing this kind of action, he’s not a real champion – he has to accept what happened on the track. This year for sure he is struggling with Toprak and with me; sometimes he wins, sometimes I win and sometimes Toprak wins, so we have to accept the situation.

“Today, he didn’t accept and he just tried to take me out of the race.”

Pressed on whether he believed the incident was deliberate, Bautista added: “For sure it was intentional. For me, it doesn’t matter about points, or championship or racing, but it is [about] safety.

“I crashed but fortunately I had no problem physically, but what happens if I had a bad crash – this is a question about safety and today was out of the limit for safety.”

Rea felt the clash was a racing incident and said he had “zero bad intentions” as he apologised to his rival.

“I’m sorry that he crashed but first lap, I was fighting for position, I went down the inside with space but he was closing the door,” Rea said.

“At one point I had to move my bike – I was going to close the front. It happened to me many times when someone comes barrel-rolling down the inside and blows out the corner; I didn’t even blow out the corner, I made my apex.

“It was really unfortunate he went down and I’m sorry for that, but there was zero bad intentions from my side and I just wanted to do my race.

“Unfortunately he got caught up, we tangled. These things happens and we try to move on, so sorry for him and he lost some points.”

Round eight of the championship takes place at Catalunya in Spain from September 23-25.