Thirteen out of twenty-five riders crashed in the Andalusian MotoGP Sprint Race. It is enough data to ask ourselves if the conditions for racing were there, to ask ourselves why the race was not interrupted. Luckily no one was hurt, and then the attention falls on a Race Direction that decides sanctions without uniformity of judgment, on penalties that arrive two hours late and create embarrassment. Do pilots really deserve all this? And what about us watching?
THEthe fact that we hadn’t yet talked about the referee – the Race Direction – was one of the positive aspects of this start to the season MotoGP. Indeed, the MotoGP referee had started his 2024 in an encouraging way, because the decision to put an end to the mess between Marc Marquez and Pecco Bagnaia in Portimao as a racing accident it had convinced more or less everyone. Then on a Saturday with unpredictable weather, between the twenty-fifth of April and the first of May, the first truly crazy afternoon of the season occurs. In the Sprint Race of Jerez de la Frontera thirteen pilots fall (no one, fortunately, gets hurt), Brad Binder and Marc Marquez become protagonists of two red pen maneuvers, which heavily damage Pecco Bagnaia and Joan Mir. The Race Direction also falls; Why you don’t want to have a race in which thirteen out of twenty-five drivers crash, you don’t have to have a declared dry race that is contested with wet patches – visible from the helicopter’s cameras – in full flight. If the drivers, during the alignment lap, did not report the issue, someone else should have asked themselves the doubt. Someone else later, seeing the pilots falling like ninepins, should have stopped the show. If we can talk about a show.
“Because these pilots risk their lives” – raises his voice Carlo Pernat, manager of Enea Bastianini, on Sky. “If I were a rider, at the next Safety Commission I would point the finger at the commissioners, at Marquez and at Binder. Marc Marquez, when he puts up numbers like this, must get a long lap penalty for Sunday’s race. Because otherwise MotoGP becomes TO La guerre comme à la guerre and pilots get hurt. Everyone must be sanctioned equally, whether they are first or last. Decisions must be sporting, not political. I hope that the riders will agree on this because it is their life.” Far be it from us now to say that the decisions of the Stewards Panel – a body external to Dorna and independent from the dynamics of the paddock – are of a political nature. But one thing is certain: in MotoGP today, in addition to not having guaranteed the safety of the riders, there was not the slightest uniformity in judging their actions.
CUnderstanding the state of confusion that reigns in the Race Control control room is simple. Brad Binder enters turn one in a forced manner, to say the least, as if Pecco Bagnaia and Marco Bezzecchi didn’t exist. The reigning world champion finds himself on the scree, Marco miraculously stays in the saddle. Verdict? Racing accident. Marc Marquez misses the last braking point and enters with the front end of his Ducati straight into the leg of Joan Mir (already on the edge of the curve), who ends up very wide and loses the chance to bring the Honda to the points. Verdict? 93 must immediately give up a position to Augusto Fernandez (overtaken in the meantime), who without too many problems is overtaken again by the eight-time world champion a few bends later. Do you understand the disparity? In two episodes with mirrored dynamics, two different judgements. Two positions, in any case, rather light and good-natured. It naturally arises to ask what the purpose of the external strip of asphalt that the drivers would be forced to use in the event of a long lap penalty, a sanction in which approximately four seconds are normally lost. One wonders what must happen, so serious, to observe a long lap penalty in MotoGP. Do we have to wait for the driver injured by his colleague to get hurt?
ANDobviously we just have to wait. We have to wait two hours to learn that the podium of the Jerez Sprint Race, in reality, is not the one observed on television and celebrated by Martín, Acosta and Quartararo under the beautiful backdrop of the Spanish public. Two hours pass and the Race Direction announces that the Diablo has been relegated by two positions and that he has been given an eight second penalty due to an irregularity in tire pressure. In third place in the Sprint, therefore, is the wildcard Daniel Pedrosawho would certainly have received the ovation of his people if he had stood on the podium, where epic, romantic, emotional images would have been taken of him, which any MotoGP enthusiast would have framed. However, all this was not possible. Because the Race Direction – in addition to safety and uniformity of judgment – did not even guarantee adequate reactivity in its decisions. It is often said that the real World Championship begins in Jerez de la Frontera, that after the Andalusian weekend the first assessments of the season can be made. A vote for the Race Direction? NCS. Not classified. We are not.
