We need to talk about MotoGP penalties…

A few laps after the restart, world champ Pecco Bagnaia was battling for the lead with the KTMs of Jack Miller and Brad Binder in the best victory contest we’ve seen since Phillip Island last year. The KTMs were making all kinds of shapes using their awesome braking performance into Turn 6, when Miller went slightly wide and Bagnaia snuck through on the inside, lifting Miller, the pair making the gentlest of contacts.

A few laps later Bagnaia was told to drop one place for his move. Again, the penalty seemed unreasonable. Are riders no longer allowed to rub? Both riders embraced each other in the parc fermé, proving that both understand all’s fair in love and war.

Everyone has their own opinions about these incidents, including the MotoGP stewards. Some riders agreed with the sanctions, most didn’t. But I guarantee that any rider who agreed with any of the sanctions would’ve felt differently if it were the stewards hammering him. That’s how racers are.

Opinions, opinions… As Miller said to Jorge Lorenzo during an angry 2017 safety commission meeting at Le Mans: “Opinions are like assholes – everyone’s got one”.

However, not everything is opinion. Some things are facts, other things are written down and can be used in a court of law against you.

Let’s look at the case of Morbidelli’s penalty, issued by the stewards on Saturday at 5.24pm. It went something like this…

“Dear Sir… at Turn 2 you were found to be riding in an irresponsible manner, causing a crash with rider No73.

“This contravenes the specific instructions given to MotoGP competitors…” blah blah blah… “For the above reasons the FIM MotoGP stewards panel has imposed a long-lap penalty…”

Morbidelli guilty of “being ambitious”!? It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in 4 decades covering MotoGP

Yamaha appealed the decision. Morbidelli didn’t turn up for the appeal because most riders have given up getting involved in these situations, because they always lose and the bosses always win. His place was taken by team manager Massimo Meregalli.

The appeal was rejected and the wording of the decision of the FIM appeal stewards was truly jaw-dropping.

“The appeal stewards agreed with the MotoGP stewards that Franco Morbidelli No21 was observed as being ambitious in his attempt to overtake, causing contact and crash with rider No73.”

So, Morbidelli was found guilty of “being ambitious”?! This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in almost four decades of covering MotoGP. If ambition is no longer permitted then it’s time to shut down the entire circus and for everyone to go home, because literally the entire point of going racing is ambition.

Perhaps the wording was a mistake, missing the adverb “overly”. But this doesn’t matter, because this is the second time in two months that the stewards have made fools of themselves by incorrectly wording their decisions. The first time, of course, was when they made a hash of Marc Márquez’s Portimao sanction.

When hundreds of millions of Euros are being invested in a sport, words matter. And they matter even more when they go to a court of law.

I’m amazed that Yamaha aren’t taking the appeal decision to a higher court, as Honda is doing with the Márquez matter, because these mistakes need to be punished until Dorna and the FIM understand that they must employ someone in Race Direction with great sporting and legal knowledge, to ensure that MotoGP is policed like a professional sport, not like a game of neighbourhood golf.

Next week at Le Mans the riders have asked for a meeting with the stewards and Race Direction, largely because they are fed up with the lack of consistency in judgements.

This season’s most glaring inconsistency took place at last month’s Argentine GP. During the soaking Moto3 race Ayumu Sasaki bumped into GP first-timer David Almansa, moving the youngster a metre off-line. Sasaki was ordered to drop one position for that indiscretion.

A couple of hours later Takaaki Nakagami rammed Quartararo so hard on the first lap of the MotoGP race that the Frenchman nearly crashed and had to ride off the track to regain control. Quartararo had been tenth and re-joined the track outside the points. Amazingly, Nakagami received no penalty for this move, even though he is well known for his overly aggressive first-lap attacks.

It is important to point out why things have come to this point. Dorna’s quest to make the racing closer, by equalising machine performance – and therefore more exciting and attractive to fans and viewers – has certainly made the action more frantic.

Riders and bikes now race much closer, plus it’s harder to overtake, because everyone’s on the same tyres and so on, so the start becomes more and more important, so riders need to be more and more aggressive, both to make up positions and make sure they don’t lose any, because whatever you lose on lap one will be very, very hard to make up later on.

And because starts are so important, clever engineers have helped their riders by introducing holeshot devices, to guarantee the fastest-possible launch towards Turn 1.

And now that all bikes are fitted with the same technology the pack arrives at the first corners all together, so contacts are inevitable. And there is nowhere more dangerous to crash, when there’s a good chance you will get run over by a 160-kilo motorcycle with a 70-kilo rider on top.

In other words, it’s incredibly dangerous. Of course the riders must be policed to ensure they don’t ride like total maniacs but there is a very simple way to reduce the danger of the first few corners: outlaw holeshot devices. Then the pack will be slightly more spread out at the first corners, because it will be down to the individual rider’s skill – with the throttle, clutch, back brake and body position – to make the holeshot.

KTM currently has the best holeshot device – the RC16 accelerates from the grid like a bullet from a gun – which is why the first two bikes into Turn 1 on both Saturday and Sunday were RC16s. Even so, KTM wants holeshot devices banned…

MotoGP can ban anything instantly when safety is an issue, so why wait until a rider gets badly hurt or worse to ban holeshot devices?

Mat Oxley’s column will move from Tuesday to Wednesday from next week.
Don’t miss a word: sign up to our motorcycling newsletter

Sign up