Between letter and principle
There is a problem that moves under the surface in this MotoGP. It only emerges to general attention occasionally, like a river that flows underground for a long time and then suddenly surfaces, appearing out of nowhere. But in reality, it is always present. This problem is the management of penalties. On Thursday at Mugello, in the Trackhouse hospitality, there was a long chat between Trackhouse team principal Davide Brivio and Simon Crafar, president of the FIM MotoGP Stewards panel, precisely on this topic. Brivio’s team riders, Raul Fernandez and Ai Ogura, were involved in two controversial incidents in Barcelona – one ended with a penalty and the other did not – but the discussion between the two was not about these specific cases, but rather about a general theme.
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According to Brivio, the stewards too often act by strictly following the regulations but sometimes without applying common sense: “My opinion – Brivio said chatting exclusively to FormulaPassion.it – is that sometimes the stewards should be able to act on principle. Now the stewards act by strictly adhering to the single word, the single comma of the regulation, which is correct. But there are situations where, in my opinion, the principle must be applied“.
Then, the head of the American team went practical, giving a concrete example: “Two years ago we had Miguel Oliveira and – I think it was at Assen – he had received a Long Lap Penalty. The rule says that when you perform a Long Lap Penalty you must stay within the two lines. What did he do? He went a bit long, went into the gravel, then came out of the gravel and lost two or three times the time he would have lost doing a ‘normal’ Long Lap. At that point he received a second Long Lap because he was not within the lines. In my opinion, this is where the mentality should change. If I read the regulation, the decision to give him a second Long Lap is correct, but if the principle of the Long Lap is to make you lose time and he lost more than that, stop there. This is the difference between principle and rigid application“. However, Brivio does not want to use the word interpretation to explain his thought: “I don’t want to call it interpretation, because that then goes into a somewhat dangerous area. But it is the principle with which the rule was created. I would like the stewards to be given the possibility to apply the principle rather than the detailed rule. Now the stewards do not have this possibility“.
This is the reasoning that Brivio would have applied also at Jerez, in the famous ‘Marquez case’, when the Spaniard after a crash during the Sprint cut the entrance to the pit lane to be able to make the bike change. According to him, #93 in that case should have been penalized not for the ‘letter’ of the regulation, but for its spirit. To achieve something concrete, however, it would be necessary for the team managers of the various teams to ‘coalize’ behind this common-sense reasoning, trying to push everyone in the same direction.
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The big penalties for front tire pressures
But the issue does not end here. In Barcelona, Trackhouse rider Ai Ogura received a three-second penalty for knocking down Pedro Acosta at the last corner. Conversely, riders who were punished for an infraction on the now infamous front tire pressures received 16 seconds of penalty. A huge disproportion, also highlighted in an interesting analysis here on FormulaPassion.it by Marco Belloro.
We pointed out this paradoxical situation to Jorge Martin, who in Catalonia was also involuntarily involved in an incident with Raul Fernandez, with the Trackhouse rider surprisingly not penalized for the event. The 2024 world champion, however, highlighted the complete powerlessness of the riders in front of this situation: “Honestly, I hadn’t noticed this detail, but in the end these are things to talk about with race direction. We have nothing to do with penalties, it’s nothing we can control, we are not the ones who make the rules and we cannot change them. [Penalties] are the same for everyone, then there will be days when they go in your favor and others when they go against you, but I can’t do anything about that“. The problem, meanwhile, remains.
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