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MOTOGP: Noyes Notebook: Without A Poem
Dennis Noyes offers a very personal reflection on the racing tragedies that rocked the Grand Prix paddock in successive weeks.
Dennis Noyes | Posted September 13, 2010
This is a personal reflection on these last two Grands Prix and on the dark side of this sport we all love.
It was just last Sunday that Shoya Tomizawa (19) died during the Moto2 race at Misano and just two Sundays ago that Peter Lenz (13) lost his life under very similar circumstances (struck by a following rider) during the warm-up lap for the USGPRU Moriwaki MD250H support race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
I just read the provisional results of a poll by the Italian newspaper Gazetta dello Sport where over 70 percent of nearly 1100 fans say that they believe that the MotoGP race should not have been run out of respect to the memory of Tomizawa.
But the time of death given by the hospital at Riccioni was after the MotoGP race had already begun.
If you read Italian, you can read a lot about a controversy concerning the true time of death, and a lot about whether the race should have been held, and also about whether the Indianapolis GP should have been stopped.
Emotions Are High
I have not written anything until now because I just didn't know what to say and because I wasn’t in Misano. I am allowed to miss a couple of races a season and Misano is always one that I miss. Italy is a great racing country, but I don’t like going to Misano simply because that was where Wayne Rainey’s accident happened in 1993. It wasn’t the track’s fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, but I have only gone back to Misano once since 1993 and that was because I couldn’t get out of it. I was contracted to cover World Superbike then.
So I watched that Moto2 race on my computer and it was obvious to me as soon as I saw the first replay that this was a fatality.
( ^^ as did millions and what did the Dorna Motogp do at that time ? Jack .... the show must go on.........)
Another one just seven days after Indy. I kept watching, but if my son had not been in that race I might have turned it off.
We just don't have to deal with fatalities much any more in GP racing. Those of us who covered the GPs back in the bad old days when the Isle of Man was a points race and when the naked guard rails of the old Nurburgring were unprotected even by hay bales in some corners can be seen as callous when we observe that both these deaths are racing incidents, and that the fact that they took place on consecutive weekends is nothing more than coincidence.
Likewise, younger GP journalists who have only been around a few years seem innocently naïve when they suggest that the races, both of them, should have been abandoned as soon as the news of the fatal incidents were confirmed.
MOTOGP: Noyes Notebook: Without A Poem
Dennis Noyes offers a very personal reflection on the racing tragedies that rocked the Grand Prix paddock in successive weeks.
Dennis Noyes | Posted September 13, 2010
This is a personal reflection on these last two Grands Prix and on the dark side of this sport we all love.
It was just last Sunday that Shoya Tomizawa (19) died during the Moto2 race at Misano and just two Sundays ago that Peter Lenz (13) lost his life under very similar circumstances (struck by a following rider) during the warm-up lap for the USGPRU Moriwaki MD250H support race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
I just read the provisional results of a poll by the Italian newspaper Gazetta dello Sport where over 70 percent of nearly 1100 fans say that they believe that the MotoGP race should not have been run out of respect to the memory of Tomizawa.
But the time of death given by the hospital at Riccioni was after the MotoGP race had already begun.
If you read Italian, you can read a lot about a controversy concerning the true time of death, and a lot about whether the race should have been held, and also about whether the Indianapolis GP should have been stopped.
Emotions Are High
I have not written anything until now because I just didn't know what to say and because I wasn’t in Misano. I am allowed to miss a couple of races a season and Misano is always one that I miss. Italy is a great racing country, but I don’t like going to Misano simply because that was where Wayne Rainey’s accident happened in 1993. It wasn’t the track’s fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, but I have only gone back to Misano once since 1993 and that was because I couldn’t get out of it. I was contracted to cover World Superbike then.
So I watched that Moto2 race on my computer and it was obvious to me as soon as I saw the first replay that this was a fatality.
( ^^ as did millions and what did the Dorna Motogp do at that time ? Jack .... the show must go on.........)
Another one just seven days after Indy. I kept watching, but if my son had not been in that race I might have turned it off.
We just don't have to deal with fatalities much any more in GP racing. Those of us who covered the GPs back in the bad old days when the Isle of Man was a points race and when the naked guard rails of the old Nurburgring were unprotected even by hay bales in some corners can be seen as callous when we observe that both these deaths are racing incidents, and that the fact that they took place on consecutive weekends is nothing more than coincidence.
Likewise, younger GP journalists who have only been around a few years seem innocently naïve when they suggest that the races, both of them, should have been abandoned as soon as the news of the fatal incidents were confirmed.
