‘You can never make it safe’
It’s been another tragic weekend with the death of Dean Berta Viñales and my thoughts are with his family. It’s not the first time we’ve been in this situation and it goes back to one of my columns earlier in the year. Unfortunately, it’s been boiling up and it comes down to the fact that the riders and the parents think that with big run-offs, air fences and air bag suits that racing motorbikes is safe, but it isn’t – and it never will be. Motorbike racing is massively dangerous and you’re never going to stop people being killed. The riders on track have to respect each other, but it doesn’t seem like there is much respect between them right now.
The question everyone is trying to answer is ‘how do we stop it happening again?’. And that’s not an easy one to answer. I think we have to put some thought into the
‘You shouldn’t be on the track until you are 18’
age of these riders – when is a good time to start racing, do they really need to be on track when they’re 13, 14, 15?
At the moment it just feels like the kids are being shovelled in by parents all with the aim that they’re going to be the next Marquez. There is so much pressure, too. Big teams, sponsors, maybe the 300 class shouldn’t be a World Championship or be run alongside the WSB race. There is just so much expectation.
In my opinion you shouldn’t start racing on the track until you’re 18. That’s what it was like when I started and I think people forget that as the age limit has got lower and lower over the years. There also has to be something done about grid sizes – there were 42 riders on the grid in the race in which he was killed, which is a lot. Whatever ideas you come up with there is probably a reason why it won’t work. But right now it just feels raw and I’m trying to think of ways in which we can reduce the risks because we’ve had too many tragic days already this year, and I don’t want more.