MotoMatters.com | Kropotkin Thinks

What we should be talking about tonight is the return of MotoGP to the place that houses its soul, and the explosion of passion and racing that emerged from the Circuito de Jerez. But despite a tense race with a scintillating last lap that played out in front of the largest crowd to pack the Jerez track for perhaps a decade, the main topic of conversation is the level of stewarding. MotoGP at Jerez looked like the pinnacle of motorcycle, surrounded by adoring fans, and overseen by a bunch of amateurs.

The circuit was a cauldron of emotion from the crack of dawn. I walked down to Turn 10 to watch the warm up, to get a sense of who had drive out of that crucial corner, but to be honest I was captivated by the crowds. There was an intensity that has been rare in MotoGP since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, only seen at Le Mans, the Sachsenring, Assen. It felt like the old days.

Officially, there were some 79,000 fans at the track, but since the mayor of Jerez accidentally announced an attendance figure that was half of the previous year – despite the track being just as busy – Jerez crowd numbers exist only in a separate universe, with an entirely different and deeply incomprehensible counting system. I don't know how many fans there really were at Jerez, but it felt like an awful lot. The grandstands and hillsides were packed. It was glorious.

I stayed out trackside with On Track Off Road's and fellow Paddock Pass Podcaster Adam Wheeler after the warm up, waiting for the appearance of the trailer bearing the riders. Viewed from TV, it has always looked awkward, but at Jerez, everything slotted into place. This was meant as a way to improve rider interaction with the fans, and boy did it work in Spain. The roars from the crowd were deafening when the trailer stopped in front of the fans, the riders whipping the fans up into an even greater frenzy.

Loudest cheer of all – both during warm up and after, on the fan trailer – was for Dani Pedrosa. The Little Samurai has lodged himself firmly in the hearts of the Spanish fans, and in a previous reversal of his racetrack character, he lapped it all up.

"It's true, I was really enjoying that lap," Pedrosa said. "And at one point, we stopped there and they interviewed me a little, and I was about to cry! In that moment, I got emotional. And not, only because of the crowd, which was full, packed and everyone was cheering my name. But also, the riders, I was so surprised. They were so cool and they jumped in the party and cheered for me also! So it was great." Jack Miller hoisted Pedrosa onto his shoulders, a celebration of two racing legends: Dani Pedrosa, and the Circuito de Jerez.

We will skip over the first start and the red flag for the moment, to concentrate on the last few thrilling laps. Brad Binder looked like he had broken the field, especially once the FIM Stewards made Pecco Bagnaia give up a position for a botched attempt to pass Jack Miller at Turn 6, making the KTM rider sit up to avoid being hit. But lap by lap the Ducati rider inched closer, and once he got past Binder, the South African could never quite get close enough to launch a counterattack.

It was quite the turnaround for the reigning world champion. On Friday, Bagnaia looked totally lost, and a long way from being competitive. But on Friday night, his team took all the data from the other Ducati teams, and figured out how to give Bagnaia back the front-end confidence he needed to exploit the corner speed of the Ducati. (Now there is a phrase that long-time followers of the sport will never have expected to hear.

Cristian Gabarrini and the rest of Bagnaia's Ducati crew had fixed the bike sufficiently for the Italian to get on the podium in the sprint race. On Sunday the bike was even better, good enough to bide his time, hammer in a 1'37.989 to catch Binder, then pass him for the lead, and then establish control of the race from the front.

It was, Paolo Ciabatti told me, a champion's race, exactly what was needed after crashing out of the last two Sunday grand prix races in Argentina and Austin. Those crashes were certainly running through Ciabatti's mind as the race drew to a close. Fortunately for the Ducati Sporting Director, Bagnaia had no doubts about himself.

The Red Bull KTM Team had not made it easy for Bagnaia. Binder had put up a tough fight for the lead, while before that, Jack Miller had caused the Italian problems. It made for some spectacular scenes, and made us all forget for a while that it is getting harder and harder for riders to overtake in the premier class.

The battle between Bagnaia on the one hand and Binder and Miller on the other was down in no small part to the differences between the bikes. Asked to summarize the strengths of the Ducati Desmosedici GP23 and the KTM RC16, Bagnaia sketched out their different characters. "I will say in KTM, traction and braking," the Italian said. "Ducati, corner speed and stability."

The competitiveness of the KTM had impressed Aleix Espargaro, who had watched the battle from afar. "The first thing I want to say is congratulations to KTM, the job they did is amazing," the Aprilia rider said. "The riders, Jack, Brad and the whole team it’s crazy what they're doing. But my feeling is that my bike is better than them."

The Aprilia RS-GP maybe better in theory, but it has been built to lay down a fast lap. The KTM, on the other hand, had been built to indulge in the argy-bargy of racing, Espargaro believed. "This is why I'm even more frustrated because their bike allowed them to be really aggressive on the race and the job they are doing is crazy," the Spaniard said. "They understand better the concept of the tire, the way of racing of 2023 and they are better than us, but once again, it's about to understand all of this. My bike is really good when I'm alone but, it's not about this."

KTM test rider Dani Pedrosa disavowed any responsibility for creating that, deflecting the praise directly onto the shoulders of the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing Team riders Brad Binder and Jack Miller. "It's something Brad and Jack and their team did, that they developed some sort of feeling and setting that allows them to fight. Because they are every weekend doing that."

As a test rider, doing a lot of laps on a nearly empty track, it was impossible to simulate being caught in an on-track battle, Pedrosa explained. "I cannot set up the bike for overtakes, I can just set up the bike for good braking, good turning, good corner speed and so on. But I cannot simulate any racing moments. But yeah, I couldn't watch the race yet, but from what we saw yesterday, they look really nice and aggressive and they control the bike and that's something very important."

And so to the real topic of the day from Jerez: the second race red-flagged because of a serious crash at Turn 2, and the wildly inconsistent stewarding which emerged from that. While there were a few dissenting voices over whether Pecco Bagnaia's move on Brad Binder deserved a penalty, there was absolute unanimity on the topic of the FIM Stewards Panel's decisions seeming completely inconsistent, verging on the random. And a growing sense that things could not continue like this.

First, the crash. I watched and rewatched the crash several times together with Peter Bom, and his opinion evolved as we saw the move multiple times from multiple angles. What happened was that Fabio Quartararo was just behind Miguel Oliveira and Marco Bezzecchi coming ut of Turn 1. As they started braking for Turn 2, Bezzecchi, on the inside, tried to take a wider line, braking too late drifting left to move toward the outside of the track. On the outside, Oliveira ran a good clean line from near the kerb and was turning in to make the corner, coming from the left toward the right. In the middle, and left with nowhere to go, was Fabio Quartararo, and once the gap narrowed too much, the bike of Bezzecchi clipped Quartararo's Yamaha, and a crash unfolded.

Unfortunately for Miguel Oliveira, it was he who came off worse in the collision. The RNF Aprilia rider suffered a dislocated shoulder, and it was only back at the medical center that they managed to put the humerus back into the joint. He later went to hospital to have further scans.

"It was just, Bezzecchi was in front. I was in the middle. And you know, I had no other solution than to do that," Fabio Quartararo explained. "I mean, I could not escape this crash because, I just tried to brake and stop but I hit – I don’t know who first – but then the bike of Miguel took my clutch and I hit the bike of Bezzecchi. But I had no other solution than to do that. So I mean the crash was 100% sure."

Bezzecchi had know very little about the crash, knowing only that he had touched someone going into Turn 2. But Bezzecchi was also the butt of rumor and suggestion, as riders also viewed the Mooney VR46 as part of the problem.

"Honestly, I was there behind, and I said to the guys, the way of riding of Bezzecchi today, for me it was a bit out of control," Joan Mir said. The Repsol Honda rider had had a front seat for the entire crash, as it had unfolded in front of him. "Even on the second race. He touched with everybody. We were all, the riders behind them, worried to expect what he was going to do. All of them, trying to avoid an impact. Pieces of carbon everywhere, and just touches and a disaster."

The problem, Mir believed, is that the Stewards were only focused on the action at the front, ignoring issues further down the filed. "I said this in the Safety Commission, but sometimes it looks like the stewards only watch the guys where the camera is pointing. Then the rest doesn't matter. The penalties there don't exist. So this is something that improve a lot."

Mir was genuinely shocked when he heard that Fabio Quartararo had been given a penalty for the crash with Oliveira and Bezzecchi. "What I see there, is that the corner was going right, Bezzecchi was going left to open the line. If you open the line in the first lap, you know that you will have other riders there. So for me, Fabio doesn't have any fault. The same fault as Oliveira. Fabio was a consequence of the maneuver of another rider. But it looks like, well, this year I had a couple of penalties that were not right, and I'm not the perfect person to ask these type of things. But being realistic and everything, Fabio doesn't deserve a penalty."

The penalty for Quartararo was just one of a number of straws that broke the camel's back when it comes to stewarding. Pecco Bagnaia was forced to drop a position when he made a move on Jack Miller, and the Australian was forced to sit his KTM up. For Jorge Martin, who had been pushed wide by Jack Miller at Turn 1 a few laps previously, it was incomprehensible that Bagnaia be forced to drop a position where Miller hadn't.

"Race Direction - if they penalize Pecco, they should penalize Jack," the Pramac Ducati rider told us after the race. "And if they didn’t penalize Jack? Then they don't have to penalize Pecco." That decision angered Ducati as well, but almost every rider mentioned that as a pointing to a lack of consistency in the Stewards' decision-making process.

The worst thing was that the Stewards never offered any accountability for their decisions to the riders or to the teams. When riders are called in front of the FIM Stewards Panel, the Stewards listen to their explanations (or excuses), and hand down penalties. They do not explain why they felt a particular move was beyond the pale, they just tell the riders they have broken the rules and they will be penalized. The appeals process follows a similar path.

Perhaps to abate that anger, the Stewards are to attend the riders Safety Commission on Friday at Le Mans, to lay out the principles they use to judge whether a particular action has broken the rules. "We are in a transition moment, in my opinion," Luca Marini said. "I heard that in Le Mans, that in the Safety Commission we will speak also with the stewards. This will be interesting, because every rider wants to have clear the situation. So for me the problem is not whether something is a penalty or not, it's just the line that they have to follow. If a rider makes this action, this will be the penalty. And this needs to be the same every time."

That feeling was almost universally shared among the riders, and far beyond. The inconsistency in handing out penalties was not yet preventing riders from attempting a pass, but it was affecting their expectations, Joan Mir said. "We are riders, we will make the move. But then you are afraid, because you say, maybe I will get a penalty or maybe not. So today will maybe be the day where we do, or the day we don't. When I make a risky maneuver, I think of that," the Repsol Honda rider told us.

Wandering through the paddock on Sunday night soliciting opinions, there is a broad feeling that the position of the current slate of stewards is untenable. At every level, from riders to team members to senior figures, there is a simmering anger at the utter lack of consistency of the FIM Stewards, and the refusal to show any kind of accountability for their decisions. The FIM Stewards Panel is a black box, like ancient Greek gods handing down punishments from the lofty heights of Mt Olympus.

I share that anger. Policing motorcycle racing is one of the hardest jobs in the world. On the one hand, racing motorcycles is difficult and dangerous enough, and you do not want bad and dangerous behavior to be rewarded, by allowing risky moves that could end up injuring other riders. But on the other hand, in a sport where everything is so close, you cannot stifle any attempt to pass by taking an overly cautious approach to risk.

Even so, what makes the current situation worse is the apparent refusal of the Stewards to pick a lane. Some actions they let go or ignore, despite them looking extremely dangerous from the outside, and sometimes causing another rider harm. Yet they come down on other actions like a ton of bricks, even though at times those actions look relatively innocuous, or are obviously and clearly an unavoidable result of bikes all trying to claim the same piece of asphalt.

There is an argument to be made that MotoGP riders should be policed a little more leniently. These are the most gifted and experienced riders in the world. They know what they are doing, and they understand the risks involved. Their bikes have a flexibility that other classes do not have.

Moto3 and Moto2 are on horsepower-restricted machines, and the Moto3 bikes are very light and can be put into almost any space. Moto3 riders are almost all very young, and with no experience at the highest level of racing. It makes sense to clamp down heavily on physical riding in Moto3, to train the youngsters to think about what they are doing. But it makes no sense to try to rein in riders who have been in the grand prix paddock for a decade or more, and have an intimate understanding of what is possible and what is not.

It would be nice to let the MotoGP riders race. That, after all, is what they are here to do.

Finally, we had two red flags in two race starts at Jerez. Why is that? The answer is not as straightforward as you might think.

First and foremost, the start of the race is the most dangerous part. 22 MotoGP bikes have to launch off the line, and thread their way through a very narrow line. That is particularly difficult at Jerez, where the wide entry to Turn 1 narrows down as it approaches Turn 2.