Álvaro Bautista has been forced to withdraw from the rest of this weekend’s proceedings at the French Grand Prix in Le Mans after a crash in practice caused him further injuries.

Bautista suffered from a big highside on only the third lap of Saturday morning’s practice session, landing hard on the asphalt and sustained some more minor injuries, as well as aggravating the broken collarbone that he sustained only a week ago.

“It is not a good way to say bye-bye to a MotoGP race,” the Spanish rookie said. “This morning I had an injection to help with the pain and for two laps the feeling was a little bit better, not a big difference, but better.

“Then I crashed and I don’t really know why because I was not going very fast and I just lost the rear tyre. After that I felt more pain down my left side and I decided not to race here and make sure I make a full recovery for the next race. In the future we have lots of races together so it is better to be 100 percent in all of them, than be 50 percent or less in one!”

Bautista was one of three riders to all crash on the same lap this morning, all caught out by the low track temperatures. He was treated by Dr. Costa’s staff straight after the session and after careful consideration and discussions with the team, took the decision to abandon any further attempts to race this weekend.

Bautista will return to Spain for further treatment to make sure he is fit for the next round of the season at Mugello in Italy in two weeks’ time.