I'm not sure as to what you mean by MM not knowing where VR was at the point he decided to turn in and accelerate. See attached picture.
If you meant that MM would not have any expectation that Rossi would be coming underneath him in that corner, whilst MM was unsighted as he was ahead, Marques was quite wide of the racing line entering the corner. This can be seen by the number of tyre marks inboard of even where VR was. MM ran wide having just overtaken VR in the previous corner, and given the cut and thrust of the racing to that point would surely have expected VR to come back underneath him. Once in MM's eyeline I agree, Rossi did not do what could have normally been expected by MM, but from that point MM could see VR's bike quite clearly. See video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_53E6cxlfU
I said I didn't know whether MM knew where VR was, but my main contention is that MM did nothing but turn in normally for the corner, it was VR who made the non-racing move of slowing down markedly and going markedly off line.
I just watched the first laps of the race again, something for which I normally feel no necessity since I do the gifted visual memory thing which still seems to persist despite the passing years, and I was incorrect that Rossi turned his head to look where MM was at the time of the incident, it was a little earlier than I had thought.
However my memory of the remainder of the early race was correct, JL had the then fastest lap of the race by 0.5 seconds to catch MM immediately before he passed him, MM whatever his motives made only fairly clean (particularly by his standards) racing moves, Nick Harris who whilst not a leading intellect is hardly a "Rossi -hater" called MM as having made an error in the braking zone when JL passed him, voiced no suspicions of shenanigans whilst MM and VR were duelling, and basically said "what the f... was VR thinking/doing" when the incident occurred. MM also looked to be riding fairly raggedly early in the duel to stay with VR. I have previously agreed that he probably raced more fiercely than is warranted against a championship contender, against whom there is no obligation to concede position imo but probably an obligation to not take out by a rash move, but I remain puzzled as to what reaction Valentino expected to elicit by his pre-race remarks.
I also looked at the warm-up times concerning which Paparazzo has made much ado; MM rode one lap which was 0.319 seconds faster than JL's fastest, and another which was 0.094 seconds faster. JL's fastest lap was faster than all but these 2 laps, and his second fastest faster than all but 3 of MM's warm up laps, whilst being 0.095 seconds slower than MM's 3rd fastest lap. So MM can do a banzai lap in a session? Who would have ever guessed.
I am no MM fan, because of the Willairot incident in particular but also several other reckless incidents, and partly adopted JL when Stoner retired because I thought he had the best chance of beating MM. However I do think he rode much more judiciously in the second half of the 2015 season, and rode particularly cleanly at PI after which Valentino started all this argy-bargy. I think the accusations made against him were fairly outlandish and the burden of proof for such accusations was on the accusers, and such proof fairly obviously doesn't exist.
