Assen Review: In defense of Ratthapark Wilairot

 In Moto2

The historic Dutch TT celebrated it’s 80th anniversary this weekend and under beautiful blue skies and bathed in sun the numerous rabid MotoGP fans didn’t care for football or tennis or any other sport going on at the moment. Instead they pilgrimaged to the fabulous Assen circuit in expectation of three exciting and action-packed races.

Unfortunately they didn’t get quite that. There was no doubt world class racing going on, but all three classes saw victories by over two seconds each and apart from a few interesting battles further back and the spectacular Red Bull Rookies race, there wasn’t much else going on at the Dutch track on Saturday, despite the weather and the amazing fan support.

However, there was lots of drama before Saturday even came around. Marco Melandri had a – in his own words – “silly little crash” with big consequences, dislocating his shoulder in second free practice and being ruled out of the race.
In Moto2 there were even more casualties in qualifying. Axel Pons crashed heavily, broke his right arm and is uncertain for his home Grand Prix in Catalunya this weekend.
And Alex Debon ran into a cruising Ratthapark Wilairot, crashed and fractured his collarbone, consequently ruling him out of the race after he’d already qualified for the front row.

Now race direction has reviewed the incident and as a result fined Thai rider Ratthapark Wilairot with a $3000 penalty.
I’m not sure how to put this delicately, but this decision is absolute bullshit.

If you haven’t seen the crash (with a video pass you can do so here) this is what happened: Debon passed another rider, then ran very wide, on and over the rumble strip, and quickly caught up with a cruising Ratthapark Wilairot who – and this gets important in a minute – was riding outside the white line that marks the border of the track. Debon proceeded trying to pass Wilairot on the outside – meaning outside of the track, already on the green – because he was going way too wide, but then slamming into Wilairot’s exhaust which caused him to crash and getting injured as mentioned above.
The penalty for Wilairot is now being reasoned as for “irresponsible riding” while being on the racing line. Neither of which is true.

For one, Wilairot was outside of the track at the time of the incident – as can be clearly seen in the replay that he was over the white line – and secondly, he was so far at the edge of the track, if anything it was not a very clever move from Debon trying to pass him on the outside when there was no track for him to go. But it was clear that Debon had too much speed at that moment and even without Wilairot there he’d have had some serious trouble staying on track. Wilairot was simply at the wrong spot at the wrong time, but there was certainly no irresponsible riding going on and absolutely no reason to fine him or his team with $3000. Granted, a rider has been injured and we are all sorry about that, but it was nobody’s fault and it is simply wrong penalizing another rider just to have a scapegoat.

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