MotoGP Penalty Rule Changed

THE 2015 MOTOGP WILL BE remembered as one of the most controversial seasons in the history of the sport mainly because of the fight between Rossi and Marquez at Sepang and its aftermath. In an attempt to make life easier for any rider in that situation, MotoGP have moved to change the way they award penalty points. Until last year, the rule stated that if a rider got four penalty points, which are valid for a year, then he would start at the back of the grid, which Rossi had to do because of the three penalty points he had collected for the incident in Sepang along with a single point he had been awarded in Misano.

For 2016, the rule change is pretty simple. If a rider accumulates, for the first time, four penalty points in a single year, then he will be given a back-of-the-grid start punishment. However, since the points are valid for a year, the rider will not be given the same punishment for the same mistake again in the next season. The rider will have to accumulate three more penalty points, a total of seven, before he can be punished again, which will be a pit-lane start in this case.

The new regulations will help Valentino Rossi in a big way because MotoGP cannot hand him the same punishment again in 2016. This basically means that when his penalty points tally goes back to zero after Sepang, he will have to accumulate seven points before MotoGP can punish him again. If Rossi manages to stay out of trouble in 2016 and doesn’t add to his penalty points tally, he will have nothing to worry about.