Michael Scott | September 27, 2017
COLUMN
The Misano Mutineers
Ah, the good old days. When racing was racing and riders were tough. Not like the cotton-wool-wrapped overpaid social-media celebs of today.
I jest, of course: nobody who rides a 260-horsepower MotoGP is namby pamby. But I was thinking about this at Misano, when it started raining on race day.
Because, well, because that’s what happens at Misano, no matter which direction they run it, and no matter how often they resurface it, the track became slippery.
As a result, there were a few crashes on race day. Eighty crashes, in fact. Spread over three classes, although those scampish youngsters in Moto3 took the lions’ share.
It brought the total over the weekend to 140. Which I think is a record, and certainly sets the bar very high, in a year of high achievement in this regard. The greatest numbers managed anywhere else so far are 94 at Le Mans—the figure swelled by 22 all in one go when somebody spilled an oil slick in Moto3 and almost everybody crashed on it; and then a relatively meager 91 at Assen.
Now Misano has a bit of a history here. Back in those good old days, 1989, to be precise, the surface was even more dodgy than now, a patchwork quilt of resurfacing, with poor drainage, scrubby run-offs, and a pack of heroes riding unruly 500cc two-strokes with a throttle response like the kick of a mantis shrimp.
As so often seems to be the case at the Adriatic resorts at any time of year (this happened to be May), the weather was unpredictable. Some rain in practice had demonstrated that when wet the track becomes pretty lethal. Instead of the usual 10 to 15 percent increase in lap times, they were more like 40 percent slower.
This was a year when the newly formed IRTA was fighting with the FIM about almost everything, and the riders were in turn fighting with IRTA. Their current bone of contention concerned IRTA’s banning of tire warmers on the grid. They were already considering a start-line protest. The damp weather, paradoxically, added fuel to the fire.
The sequence of events was a role model for pure shambles.
The race was already late when it started spotting with rain on the sighting lap. As mechanics swapped tires and brakes, Eddie Lawson and Randy Mamola led the factory riders back to their motorhomes. They would return in an hour to reassess conditions.
So they did, ran another warm-up lap, and all but a handful of privateers (remember privateers?) pulled into the pits. Eventually, the crowd by now booing and hurling missiles, the race started one-and-a-half hours late. It lasted four laps before it rained again, and Kevin Schwantz led everyone back to the pits as the red flags came out, as much to save the organizers’ red faces as anything, the riders having already made their own decision.
Cut a long story short, they did eventually run a 29-lap race (35 had been scheduled), but all but two factory riders declined to start. The exceptions were Pier-Francesco Chili and his one-race teammate, American AMA and World Superbike champion Fred Merkel. Sponsored by HB cigarettes but in an Italian-run team, they’d been ordered to break the strike, or else.
Merkel pulled in after a couple of laps, citing “clutch trouble,” Chili doggedly continued, pursued throughout by wide-eyed German privateer Michael Rudroff. By the end, Briton Simon Buckmaster, on a second three-cylinder Honda production racer, was ahead of the German. A first and only rostrum for both of them, as they flanked a sombre Chili (for whom, by the way, it was one of only three top-class GP podiums).
Frankie was in tears, looking ashamed rather than triumphant after his own sole GP win and would be ostracized by the other factory riders for the rest of the season and beyond. Then again, he was crying all the way to the beach, where he later opened a high-style restaurant at nearby Misano.
Fast forward to 2017. Almost 30 years have passed, but the situation is not much different. The rain hit on Sunday morning, and the track became lethal. Some Moto3 riders fell off and remounted twice. Wasn’t much different in Moto2.
What would happen for the main race of the day?
It may be a sign of the times that there wasn’t even any talk of not racing. Not a hint of a riders’ protest of any kind. Today’s heroes did what many thought yesterday’s should have done: went out and raced. After all, the throttle goes both ways, and nowadays they have airbags in their leathers. Nine of them did crash. All walked away.
Are today’s racers braver? Less sensible? More admirable? Or just paid so much they can’t afford to rebel? CN
