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Mike Trimby, founder and CEO of IRTA, the association of MotoGP teams, passed away suddenly. Mike, one of the key figures in the history of MotoGP, was in Misano for the Mugello Grand Prix.
Dorna has announced that his memory will be celebrated during the GP weekend.
It's hard to imagine him in a leather suit riding a powerful and cranky 500 2-stroke, yet Mike Trimby was a racer. He had started working as a mechanic in the 1970s, moving on to race in England eventually racing on the Isle of Man as well.
In those days racing was travel and adventure, so Mike also gave himself over to organizing trips until in the early 1980s, abetted by that revolutionary Kenny Roberts, along with Barry Coleman, a lawyer, after a strike in Nogaro, at a drivers' meeting in Donington in 1982, he was asked to represent the newly formed association. Just four years later, IRTA, the International Road Race Team Association, the body representing all the teams in the motorcycle racing world championship, which was then still the Continental Circus, was born. Caravans, tents and a few motor homes.
It was the time when FIM, the International Motorcycle Federation still controlled the whole sport. Safety was sloppy, riders' earnings, low. Trimby was committed to growing the association along with many other people such as Michel Metraux, Luigi Brenni, then president of CCR, an enlightened and passionate engineer, managing the transition from a quasi-amateur sport governed by the Federation, to a professional sport that in a few years saw its reins pass to Bernie Ecclestone, with his Two Wheeel Promotion, at Dorna.
Meanwhile, from a quasi-revolutionary association, Irta turned into Dorna's right-hand man, helping the Spanish organization manage the passage of money into team coffers. A long history that will continue without Mike.
The entire editorial staff of GPOne extends its deepest condolences to Mike's family and loved ones.
