Unite and make yourselves respected, wrote Stefano Ollanu in a beautiful editorial published on the pages of FormulaPassion.it at the end of the terrible weekend experienced by MotoGP in Barcelona. A call to the riders, to make their voice heard, united and compact, to try to improve those aspects – safety, but not only that – that at this moment may be lacking in the premier class of the Motorcycle World Championship. Yes, but the unity of purpose, constructive dialogue between the parties, and collaboration seem to be an unrealizable utopia in this MotoGP.
Bagnaia, Marini, Miller – the loyal members of the Safety Commission – struggle to make the rest of the grid understand that it is important to participate in these meetings. Some, like Pedro Acosta, may have finally been convinced that it would be in everyone’s interest to speak up, and tomorrow here at Mugello there will be a greater ‘attendance’ after what happened in Catalonia, with the two accidents of Zarco and Alex Marquez that could both have ended in tragedy.
But already Fabio Quartararo – not exactly just anyone – has clearly stated that he does not intend to show up. The Italian riders seem the most sensitive to this issue. Enea Bastianini, for example, showed a more combative spirit: “Now is the time to make ourselves heard – he declared during the media scrum, the KTM rider – I believe we need to have our own association to protect us. It has been little talked about so far”. However, the very active Marini appeared sadly skeptical about the possibility of managing to ‘create’ a common representative to protect the riders’ interests, even though he is convinced that this is exactly what is needed: “It would be very useful and the riders would have the opportunity to better make their voices heard and discuss important issues with the organizer”. Yes, but it will not happen.
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But this lack of unity in working to achieve shared changes is a problem that does not only concern the riders and extends to other areas beyond safety: there is the issue of penalties applied by the marshals, which do not convince many within the paddock – including team managers – but on which there seems to be no possibility of intervention in the short term, also because the managers themselves do not present a united front; there is the hypothesis of eliminating the second bike for each rider, on which the riders themselves have expressed very critical opinions today, but which remains on the table for now.
In short, in today’s MotoGP it seems that everyone is perfectly able to identify the aspects they do not like, but no one has the strength to intervene concretely to bring about tangible improvements. Unity would be needed, at least to try to shake up the status quo. But this remains a utopia for now.
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