they made these rules that
both spoiled the racing and, in
one case, added rather than
removed danger—were they
thinking?
Nowadays, the "they" com-
prise not a happy band of
amateurs
but professional
management, supposedly
combining sporting and safety
requirements with competence
and commercial awareness.
It seems that a spell of clarity
in rulemaking and enforcement
that followed Dorna's takeover
from the FIM back in the early
1990s has been left far behind.
The events were at Assen and
Sachsenring.
The rules were, respectively,
those concerning front tire pres-
sure and Moto3 misbehavior.
Tires first,
for this is the one
that has really spoiled things,
leading to riders deliberately
slowing down, as well as re-
shuffled results, so that, quite
bizarrely, the order
in which they
W
elcome back, the bad
old days, a time when, it
seems at almost every
race, the same question was
raised about those running the
sport: "What were they think-
ing?"
Back
then it was the so-called
blue-blazer brigade—arm-band-
ed amateur functionaries from
the FIM.
The last two rounds
before
the summer break raised the
same feeling. Just what—when
P138
CN II IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
Marc Marquez
tried to play by the
rules but still paid
the price.
PHOTO:
GOLD & GOOSE
RULES THAT MAKE
RACING LOOK RIDICULOUS
