MOTOGP: Noyes’ Notebook - Butler: “Roadracing Is A Contact Sport,”
http://moto-racing.speedtv.com/article/motogp-noyes-notebook-roadracing-is-a-contact-sport-pt-i/
By: Dennis Noyes
There are lots of rules -- a book full of them -- but when it comes to rules concerning rider conduct during races, judgment calls are required. And although Race Direction is composed of four men, the primary responsibility falls to the Permanent Race Director who chairs the meeting and sets the agenda.
And that man is MotoGP Race Director, Paul Butler of Great Britain, who will retire at the end of this season after a run in the tower that began with the final race of the 1999 season.
Paul is quick to point out that the other members of Race Direction, Belgian Claude Danis from the FIM, Italian former 500cc World Champion Franco Uncini, and Spanish Dorna representative Javier Alonso, all take part in every decision, but the leader in the tower is the Race Director.
Butler’s final year before passing the torch to current FIM Technical Director Mike Webb of New Zealand could very well prove his most difficult: Casey Stoner has repeatedly claimed that Valentino Rossi is “a dirty rider.” At the most recent round in Portugal, reigning World Champion Jorge Lorenzo openly criticized the riding of former 250 World Champion Marco Simoncelli. And, just as the teams are rolling into Le Mans for the French GP, Rossi has told Italian journalists that Stoner “waited” on track in Estoril during the post-race tests and “obstructed” him.
Italian TV rights holders Mediaset report that "a little bird" told them that Stoner ran Rossi off the track. But any complaints to Race Direction and the FIM would have to come from someone a bit more concrete that 'the little bird' of Estoril.
These final 15 rounds (or perhaps 14 if Japan is not run) have the potential to bring Butler and Race Direction into the spotlight.
Butler makes his understanding of roadracing very clear with a single statement: “Roadracing is a contact sport.”
That is something all racers know but not all fans understand. Butler spells it out very clearly, explaining, “We can’t go drawing lines on the track and telling riders, like Olympic runners, to stay in their lanes. There will be contact and it is our task in Race Direction to determine whether a rider is simply being competitive, being aggressive, or whether he is riding dangerously and placing other riders in danger.”
During a long and interesting interview with Butler, we went over some of the more controversial overtakings and incidents of his dozen years in the tower and he explained why, for example, very similar incidents were treated in very different ways.
Consider the contrast between the one-race suspension given to American John Hopkins for taking out two riders in Turn 1 at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix of 2003 at Motegi and the lack of any action taken when Loris Capirossi took out five riders (all four Americans and Max Biaggi) at the same corner at the start of the Japanese GP a year later.
Butler said, “It was not difficult to decide that, in 2003, John Hopkins was not going to be able to make the corner. He was going at warp speed. It was shades of Capirossi taking out (Tetsuya) Harada in Argentina. He came in out of control and took out two riders. The one race sanction was in order.
"This was similar to the Randy Krummenacher sanction last year at Aragon when he was on an impossible line, saw he wasn’t going to make the corner and cut the track, taking out (Marc) Márquez at the very start of the 125cc race. We had the advantage in race control of having the helicopter shot they showed it was not a case of simply getting in too hot. He was in a bad spot. He saw he lost three or four places in the shuffle going into Turn 1 and so he just turned left and cut the corner from behind the curve. And that was what caused the crash when he came back on the track. The other guys were on the legitimate line and he took them out.
"It was probably the first time we used a black flag that way, but we were 100% sure of our decision. We took some time over it. I was actually the least convinced; I usually am the most reluctant to apply a penalty -- that’s me. I don’t like to rush to judgment. You have to let the emotion subside and be cold about it. Now there is more pressure on us because we have all the images available to us and the race is still going on. But the judgment was that other people’s races were wrecked by what was an illegal and irrational maneuver so the right call was to take the guy out of the race.
"The call with Hopkins that we started talking about was easier because we made it in calm after the race because John was already out of the race. Now in the Krummenacher incident I’d say that if we had only had the broadcast feed we would not have understood what really happened so having the additional helicopter feed made it possible for us to understand and make the right call.
"A year after the Hopkins incident came the Capirossi incident. Although there were more riders taken down, it was completely different. Loris had gotten into the corner and was accelerating on the racing line when the bike broke away. I mean he got in the corner, was over ambitious, lost the front, and skittled everybody. That was a racing incident and not deserving of a sanction. There was no meeting to discuss it because the four of us saw that it was just racing.”
Perhaps, over the years, concepts of acceptable riding change. And perhaps that is why younger riders have different expectations and why more veteran riders, Rossi as the prime example as he was the last 500cc World Champion, remember the rougher riding of the previous generation.
Butler certainly comes from those times. He started working in the trenches with Dunlop and then moved to a management position with Yamaha’s European-based racing department before getting the call, in 1978, to oversee the Kenny Roberts effort. When Roberts retired and started his own team, Butler became Director of the Lucky Strike Yamaha team and then later the Marlboro Yamaha team. He was directly involved in teams that won six 500cc titles (three with Kenny Roberts and three with Wayne Rainey) and one 250 title (with John Kocinski).
Although almost everything about racing has improved since those days -- especially track safety -- Paul believes that “the rules of the road” as they refer to what is acceptable and what is not have not changed.
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My thoughts; Roadracing Is A Contact Sport. all riders need to put up with racing or shut up.
http://moto-racing.speedtv.com/article/motogp-noyes-notebook-roadracing-is-a-contact-sport-pt-i/
By: Dennis Noyes
There are lots of rules -- a book full of them -- but when it comes to rules concerning rider conduct during races, judgment calls are required. And although Race Direction is composed of four men, the primary responsibility falls to the Permanent Race Director who chairs the meeting and sets the agenda.
And that man is MotoGP Race Director, Paul Butler of Great Britain, who will retire at the end of this season after a run in the tower that began with the final race of the 1999 season.
Paul is quick to point out that the other members of Race Direction, Belgian Claude Danis from the FIM, Italian former 500cc World Champion Franco Uncini, and Spanish Dorna representative Javier Alonso, all take part in every decision, but the leader in the tower is the Race Director.
Butler’s final year before passing the torch to current FIM Technical Director Mike Webb of New Zealand could very well prove his most difficult: Casey Stoner has repeatedly claimed that Valentino Rossi is “a dirty rider.” At the most recent round in Portugal, reigning World Champion Jorge Lorenzo openly criticized the riding of former 250 World Champion Marco Simoncelli. And, just as the teams are rolling into Le Mans for the French GP, Rossi has told Italian journalists that Stoner “waited” on track in Estoril during the post-race tests and “obstructed” him.
Italian TV rights holders Mediaset report that "a little bird" told them that Stoner ran Rossi off the track. But any complaints to Race Direction and the FIM would have to come from someone a bit more concrete that 'the little bird' of Estoril.
These final 15 rounds (or perhaps 14 if Japan is not run) have the potential to bring Butler and Race Direction into the spotlight.
Butler makes his understanding of roadracing very clear with a single statement: “Roadracing is a contact sport.”
That is something all racers know but not all fans understand. Butler spells it out very clearly, explaining, “We can’t go drawing lines on the track and telling riders, like Olympic runners, to stay in their lanes. There will be contact and it is our task in Race Direction to determine whether a rider is simply being competitive, being aggressive, or whether he is riding dangerously and placing other riders in danger.”
During a long and interesting interview with Butler, we went over some of the more controversial overtakings and incidents of his dozen years in the tower and he explained why, for example, very similar incidents were treated in very different ways.
Consider the contrast between the one-race suspension given to American John Hopkins for taking out two riders in Turn 1 at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix of 2003 at Motegi and the lack of any action taken when Loris Capirossi took out five riders (all four Americans and Max Biaggi) at the same corner at the start of the Japanese GP a year later.
Butler said, “It was not difficult to decide that, in 2003, John Hopkins was not going to be able to make the corner. He was going at warp speed. It was shades of Capirossi taking out (Tetsuya) Harada in Argentina. He came in out of control and took out two riders. The one race sanction was in order.
"This was similar to the Randy Krummenacher sanction last year at Aragon when he was on an impossible line, saw he wasn’t going to make the corner and cut the track, taking out (Marc) Márquez at the very start of the 125cc race. We had the advantage in race control of having the helicopter shot they showed it was not a case of simply getting in too hot. He was in a bad spot. He saw he lost three or four places in the shuffle going into Turn 1 and so he just turned left and cut the corner from behind the curve. And that was what caused the crash when he came back on the track. The other guys were on the legitimate line and he took them out.
"It was probably the first time we used a black flag that way, but we were 100% sure of our decision. We took some time over it. I was actually the least convinced; I usually am the most reluctant to apply a penalty -- that’s me. I don’t like to rush to judgment. You have to let the emotion subside and be cold about it. Now there is more pressure on us because we have all the images available to us and the race is still going on. But the judgment was that other people’s races were wrecked by what was an illegal and irrational maneuver so the right call was to take the guy out of the race.
"The call with Hopkins that we started talking about was easier because we made it in calm after the race because John was already out of the race. Now in the Krummenacher incident I’d say that if we had only had the broadcast feed we would not have understood what really happened so having the additional helicopter feed made it possible for us to understand and make the right call.
"A year after the Hopkins incident came the Capirossi incident. Although there were more riders taken down, it was completely different. Loris had gotten into the corner and was accelerating on the racing line when the bike broke away. I mean he got in the corner, was over ambitious, lost the front, and skittled everybody. That was a racing incident and not deserving of a sanction. There was no meeting to discuss it because the four of us saw that it was just racing.”
Perhaps, over the years, concepts of acceptable riding change. And perhaps that is why younger riders have different expectations and why more veteran riders, Rossi as the prime example as he was the last 500cc World Champion, remember the rougher riding of the previous generation.
Butler certainly comes from those times. He started working in the trenches with Dunlop and then moved to a management position with Yamaha’s European-based racing department before getting the call, in 1978, to oversee the Kenny Roberts effort. When Roberts retired and started his own team, Butler became Director of the Lucky Strike Yamaha team and then later the Marlboro Yamaha team. He was directly involved in teams that won six 500cc titles (three with Kenny Roberts and three with Wayne Rainey) and one 250 title (with John Kocinski).
Although almost everything about racing has improved since those days -- especially track safety -- Paul believes that “the rules of the road” as they refer to what is acceptable and what is not have not changed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My thoughts; Roadracing Is A Contact Sport. all riders need to put up with racing or shut up.
