Tuesday, 07 September 2010 08:24 by Ernesto Emmi

Paved run-off areas and artificial grass are ideas the come from the world of auto racing. But cars have different needs than bikes, and several accidents, luckily less severe than the one we saw Sunday that took the life of Shoya Tomizawa, serve as proof of this.

Casey Stoner, never one to hold back when confronted by a microphone, repeated this same sentiment at Misano, after the race.

“I've been against the paved run-off areas since the beginning – the Australian said – The extra tarmac gives everybody an invincible feeling that they can run-off and come straight back on.  It is ridiculous, riders become too confident and without fear they ride with too much confidence and things like this can happen.  Grass is not the best thing but if it was real grass or real dirt people wouldn't push that far."

The fact remains that most of the GP circuits in the world are moving towards this type of treatment for the run-off areas, in order to please the auto racing community.

“I think – Stoner concluded – that us bike racers are more at risk than the car racers, and so we should be the ones setting the safety standards, not the the auto racers."

This isn't the first time that Stoner has spoken out about these issues, and hopefully people will now begin to take his comments into consideration.  And remember his tirade against the Bridgestone tires?  Well, for the last races of the season, Bridgestone will bring tires with a greater differentiation between the two compounds available.  This will mean that the "soft" compound (in reality always a relatively hard compound) will not always be able to last the race distance.