MICHAEL SCOTT
‘Therule enforcers looksilly’
Behave like naughty children and you’ll get treated that way. That’s the message to the unruly Moto3 mob, participants in the most enjoyable bike racing anywhere. It was underlined before Misano with a list of penalised riders longer than most of their teenage arms.
Twenty-seven may not be a record, but it’s the most for ages, and shows stern COMING DOWN HARD by a management who WILL NOT TOLERATE bad behaviour!
And it’d not just in the races, but going slowly in practice sessions, waiting for that vital tow, to cut your lap time by a second or more.
You can sort of see the point, when they play the Safety Card, though the same simple racing tactics go unpunished in Moto2 and MotoGP. And when it is normal practice, is it really dangerous?
What seems to have happened is that race direction and the stewards gang have talked themselves into a corner, where they’re obliged to be ever stricter. Eventually, the rulemakers start to look silly, rather than the rule-breakers.
The numbers tell their own story. All but two of 27 penalties were for slow riding (the exceptions were for knocking other riders off, where the accusations of danger are obviously entirely justified).
But how headstrong and foolish is Moto3? The racing is certainly close and furious, paint and tyre rubber freely exchanged. Yet on Sunday, it’s worth noting that only three of 30 starters didn’t finish the race. In Moto2, four out of 29. But in grownup land, MotoGP, seven out of 20 starters didn’t make the finish, and only one was a technical failure.
The stewards have found several new ways to antagonise riders this year: a new rule cancelling lap times under single rather than the previous double yellow flags being one way of messing up qualifying strategies; millimetre-close interpretation of track limits another – Quartararo just one angry rider thus robbed of a podium.
Maybe it’s time to take another look at themselves.
And if they don’t like the way Moto3 riders play the qualifying game, try another system. How about alphabetical order, starting at a different point of the alphabet every week? With (for example) McPhee able to win from 19th on the grid, it would hardly be unfair.
‘If everyone has always done it, is it dangerous?’