Michael Scott | June 4, 2016
The Grand Prix was close to cancellation after Salom’s crash – and it was only after the sanction of the late rider’s family and agreement with riders at the Safety Commission to use a safer track layout that it went ahead.
So said Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta, in a special Saturday briefing, alongside FIM safety officer Franco Uncini.
The accident was still unexplained, he said, “but it was out of the normal [cornering] line.” It was being investigated, including checking machine data. “But if it happened once, it could happen again,” he continued. As a result, it would not have been possible to continue with the track in the same condition.
Luckily enough, the Catalunya circuit offered alternative layouts used to slow Formula 1 cars, comprising a much tighter Turn 10 at the end of the back straight, and a chicane before the fast final corner onto the front straight. These effectively slow the approach to and the exit from the very fast Turn 12, where the crash happened.
The decision to use this safer layout came at the usual riders’ Safety Commission meeting, attended by ten riders, and after all delegates had visited the crash site and the other corners in question.
“All the riders agreed 100 percent,” said Ezpeleta.
One of them was Marc Marquez, who confirmed that cancellation had been a real possibility, if there had not been an alternative track layout. “At first we planned to cancel the race, but Carmelo called the team manager and Salom’s family, and they agreed that if Salom had been here he would like to race.”
The other riders at the meeting were Andrea Iannone, Pol Espargaro, Jack Miller, Bradley Smith, Alvaro Bautista, Aleix Espargaro, Andrea Dovizioso, Tito Rabat and Cal Crutchlow.
Neither of the Yamaha factory riders attended the meeting, with Jorge Lorenzo complaining that all riders and teams should have been consulted about the changes, and that the slower version of Turn 10 was an unnecessary change.
Asked why he had not gone to the meeting, he said: “There was no communication. Usually the meeting is in the Dorna office at 5:30, but this time it was at the corner.”
Marquez quickly contradicted him. “We were in the Dorna office from 5:30 until 6:15.”
The revised F1 layout, Marquez continued, was less enjoyable for the riders and fans because instead of continuing the fast and rhythmical layout it introduced harder braking and two first-gear corners to add the single one at the earlier Turn Five.
The tighter Turn Ten had been tested for MotoGP two years before, and rejected for this reason.
Lorenzo’s objection highlighted this change, and that it disfavoured the Yamahas, whose strong suit is high corner speed in fast corners.
Feelings were running high at the post-qualifying press conference, and Moto2 pole qualifier Johann Zarco took explosive offence at one injudiciously worded question, which explored apparent contradictions between various statements.
Rossi, said the Italian journalist, had said that riders had complained many times about the dangerously close barrier at Turn 12; while Ezpeleta had earlier said that there had been no such complaints. “Who is lying,” asked the journalist?
“That is a really shit question,” was the angry Frenchman’s instant response. “You are trying to make a problem, but you are the problem. You should shut up.”
Although badly framed, the question was legitimate, and Marquez quickly leapt in to calm the troubled waters.
“Nobody is lying,” he said. The danger had been raised at previous Safety Commission meetings, and air-fence had been installed, to everybody’s satisfaction. This had been a freak occurrence that nobody had anticipated.
The revised track layout effectively made a new circuit, which riders would have to learn over again. Accordingly all Saturday’s morning Free Practice sessions were extended by 15 minutes, to make a full hour for MotoGP and Moto2, and 55 minutes for Moto3.
The layout was not exactly as for F1, with track staff working late into the night to make small revisions. One was to remove a temporary barrier that was too close to the trackside at the entrance to the revised Turn 10; another was to add paint to restrict track width on the entry to the final chicane – also to avoid proximity to the trackside barrier.
While finding the braking points and lines were well within the grasp of World Championship-level riders, the matter of re-gearing and revising suspension settings for a major change in the track’s character meant hard work for the pit crews, with (for example) Moto3’s KTM teams only finding a better solution for the afternoon qualifying runs.
One unexpected result, explained technical chief Tom Jojic, had been that with a new first-gear corner before the front straight they had expected top speeds to be lower. “They turned out to be higher, so we got that wrong,” he told Dorna’s TV reporter.
Dani Pedrosa later explained the reason for this anomaly. Though the approach to the last corner was slower, it was on a more favourable wider line, and instead of slowing through the bend “you are accelerating all the way”.