In no way do I seek to diminish Miller’s wonderful achievement, but if MotoGP’s interrupted race regulations weren’t such a joke, he would not have won the race.
Consider what happened. Riders started the 26-lap race on rain tyres. A dry line began to appear, then the rain came back with a vengeance, with riders fighting 180mph aquaplaning and barely able to see the rev counter, let alone the racetrack. During those few laps they probably took more risks than they’d taken during the year’s previous seven races. As Scott Redding, said “I feared for my life.”
Finally, after 14 laps the red flags came out. It was the right decision because aquaplaning off a track at 180mph is unlikely to end well. But the race wasn’t restarted.
According to the rule book, the first race was annulled, like it had never even happened, so the riders had simply ridden through a bad dream, all the risks they’d taken during 14 arse-puckering laps had been nothing more than a hallucination. Luckily no one lay in hospital with an injury sustained in a race that had never happened. As Rainey said after a similar situation transpired at Spa-Francorchamps in 1989, “I can’t believe I just risked my life for absolutely nothing.”
According to the rules a new race was started once the torrential rain had subsided, with riders starting from the positions in which they had finished the first race, or qualifying session, if you prefer.
Conditions were still treacherous. Miller, Marquez, Redding and the rest once again took huge risks. So too did Rossi, Dovizioso, Cal Crutchlow, Bradley Smith, Dani Pedrosa, Yonny Hernandez and many others, except theirs didn’t work out.
The race lasted 12 laps, to bring the total laps to the originally planned 26 laps. Miller was the deserved winner, Marquez second, Redding third. So a 12-lap race took precedence over a 14-lap race.
In the old days, interrupted races were restarted and the result decided by adding times from both starts, so every risk and every genius move was rewarded.
The problem was the fans, or at least that’s what right-holders Dorna believed. The theory went that fans would find the concept of combined times too complicated, perhaps encouraging them to change channels and watch football, which would hurt Dorna profits.
I kind of understood that argument. But nowadays on-board transponders deliver lap times and rider positions several times a lap, which can keep fans fully up to date, second by second.
