Michael Scott | July 6, 2022
Cycle News In The Paddock
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Fast Freddie and the Farcical Fandango
The bloke who hands down punishment to miscreant riders is never going to win a popularity contest. What he might hope to earn is respect.
Alas, for racing legend Freddie Spencer, respect seems equally elusive. Once called “Fast Freddie” for his sublime talent on a factory Honda, breathtakingly winning three world championships with an ability to gallop away on cold tires, the latest internet meme has rechristened him “Farce Freddie,” after the latest Assen sanctions.
Well, that’s just vulgar abuse. Typical internet trolling, best shrugged off. Harder to take, perhaps, is a stinging rebuke from the head of Yamaha Racing, accusing the Panel of Stewards, which Spencer chairs, of serious inconsistency and serial unfairness, and further condemning a system where the panel’s decisions require no explanation or justification, and admit no further investigation.
A law unto themselves.
Resentment had been building during a season with many penalties, some rather arbitrary, and when other expected penalties were missed. It blew up at half-past four on race day in Holland, almost two hours after the race was over.
That was when the stewards announced that title leader Fabio Quartararo was to be punished with a long-lap penalty at the next round at Silverstone for “being overly ambitious and causing contact with [Aleix Espargaro], which severely impacted their race.”
Quartararo, lying third and seeing leader Pecco Bagnaia moving away, had made a lunge inside the Aprilia rider into the first-gear hairpin, and lost the front. He hit Espargaro and slid off, the Spaniard stayed on board but was punted off the track and out of the top ten. He clawed his way back to a heroic fourth.
A racing incident? Looked like it.
Certainly less of a blunder than Nakagami’s two races before in Catalunya. Up from 12th on the grid to fourth in a demon getaway, Taka then went barrelling into the first corner hard on the brakes and—just like Fabio—lost the front and hit the deck. The consequences to others were more severe.
Apart from hurting himself, he also took out front-row starter and title hopeful Pecco Bagnaia and Alex Rins, the latter for a second race in succession, and furthermore suffering a wrist fracture.
Both riders were, to put it mildly, miffed. It had been a headlong attack, a headstrong mistake. Taka was too fast too late, in the thick of a tight pack, and wrecked their races.
If this didn’t deserve a sanction, then why not?
The stewards thought otherwise. Just a “racing incident.” No sanction required. And as to a justification of this wacky view… well, that’s not part of their brief.
If this was inexplicable, all the more so when Fabio’s much more understandable slip at Assen was judged the other way.
I have rewatched both, admittedly without the closed-circuit camera angles available to the stewards, and it’s really difficult not to find this wildly inconsistent and consequently deeply unfair. And there have been other examples this year—accidents that went unpunished as well as minor transgressions that were: Jack Miller in particular a double victim of “a bogus penalty.”
Yamaha team chief Lin Jarvis stopped short of personal insult, merely expressing “disappointment” at the inequalities. Such inconsistency “damages the fairness of MotoGP and the faith in the Stewards.” At least three more serious incidents in 2022, causing retirement and/or injuries, “were left unpunished.”
And all without any chance of review or redress. An appeal to the Stewards was simply denied. Oddly, per regulations, this type of penalty is not open to discussion.
Thwarted, Jarvis wondered if the matter might be taken further. His statement added: “We wanted to raise the issue, as a matter of principle, with CAS (Court of Arbitration of Sport),” but this was blocked, under the same quirky regulation that makes the decision untouchable.
“It is precisely for these reasons that correct, balanced and consistent decisions should be taken by the Stewards,” Jarvis concluded.
Quartararo, for his part, stopped at a mild Twitter sneer on Twitter. “Congratulations to the Stewards for the amazing job… next time I will [not] try any overtake, to think about not taking a penalty.”
Hear, hear to both.
Freddie is racing royalty, so there’s no pleasure in seeing his reputation tarnished, though he must have gone into this with eyes open.
But I never tire of reminding readers of another massive irony, which he would doubtless prefer to forget, that had he and his panel been in action in 1983, he would not have won the World Championship. His last-lap attack on Kenny Roberts in Sweden put both off the track, and with Roberts the innocent victim, Freddie would have been docked one position for exceeding track limits. He’d have finished second, lost three points, and Kenny gained three. Exactly the margin by which Freddie beat Kenny overall. CN
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