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For some time now, Dorna cameras have been sneaking into the private conversations of riders, or riders with their technicians.
Initially it was entertaining, because the dialogues, mainly after the race or practice, were harmless. Some were funny and opened up a glimpse into the humanity of these guys racing each other at 300 mph.
Evidently the audience liked it, and since we seem to be looking mainly at entertainment now, we saw more and more of these interludes. There have even been rehearsals (thanks to the Aprilia team) of 'open' radio communications, with the intention of getting across what goes on behind the scenes of a Grand Prix that despite the appearance of being a perfectly oiled mechanism actually has its frantic moments.
Lately, however - these are our thoughts - it has gone further than that. We had an example of this when the confrontation between Bagnaia, Tardozzi and Dall'Igna after the first Grand Prix was made public. In the course of the clip you can hear Pecco reproaching Gigi, after questioning the perfect functioning of his Desmosedici, with a blunt 'this I want to clarify'. And the engineer's response was equally sharp - 'we'll talk about it later' - when he realized that the dialogue was taking place in front of cameras and microphones.
This new trend is surprising considering that journalists have often been singled out as creators of controversy, but now it is the organizers themselves who are doing it in the name of the show!
Now it's one thing to film an immediate reaction that happens live anyway, the first examples that come to mind are the collision in the rain between Schumacher and Coulthard at Spa-Francorchamps in 1998, with the German who, pissed off, rushed running into the pit lane to attack his opponent. Or the legendary phrase 'your ambition has exceeded your talent,' uttered by Stoner to Rossi in the Jerez pits in 2011.
Another, however, is eavesdropping and looking through the keyhole, revealing conversations that, probably, the protagonists would have preferred not to be made public.
Starting from the fact that everything is allowed, and therefore everything is publishable, we should soon be able to listen to any private talk concerning the MotoGP protagonists with the excuse that 'everything is for the show.'
Discussions regarding engagement fees, complete with figures, between managers. Threats from the wife to the rider-husband 'if you don't win tonight you can forget it'.
A little bit of everything, in short, to heat up the tempers and we know how that goes, we have many examples of that on commercial TV with an endless number of decidedly trashy shows. Do we want to arrive at that?
So in our opinion this drift is dangerous and amounts to crossing the line of privacy, which even governments are concerned with today.
We quote as an example the dialogue between Marc Marquez and his crew chief Rigamonti on the starting grid of the Austin GP.
MARQUEZ "If I go there (to change bikes) and come out of the pit lane, I start last, right? Last on the grid and without a long lap penalty?"
RIGAMONTI: "Yes, you start last."
MARQUEZ "But without a penalty."
RIGAMONTI "Yes" Then he adds , "I'm not sure how that works." And questioning Tardozzi, at his side, "If he (Marquez) now wants to start from the pit, with the dry-weather bike..."
TARDOZZI "He takes a ride-through."
At this point Marquez makes his decision, and after asking Rigamonti if the second bike is dry-ready in the pitlane, he instructs him.
MARQUEZ "Tell me if the bike is ready. When there's three minutes left, if it's dry so we go.... The mechanics go back to the pits and I go." He then brings his hand to Marco Rigamonti's ear and whispers, "Don't tell anyone." Then, after confirmation he states, "Let's go with the plan."
RIGAMONTI "Flag to flag?"
MARQUEZ "No, when there are three minutes left I'm going."
There are then other lines, from which it is clear that Marc has a plan to catch all his opponents off guard. A great example of 'fast thinking' (as well as poor knowledge of regulations, Tardozzi aside).
At this point the 'trap' is triggered and Marquez runs into the pitlane, which gives us two confirmations: 1) the Spaniard is a great athlete; 2) he is also a man absolutely without any qualms in finalizing his strategies.
Later Mike Webb confirmed that there are rules to penalize such a move, if the start was not delayed for safety reasons.
"We had a similar situation in Argentina in 2018. We got together and rewrote the rules to make sure that anyone who changes the type of tyres on the bike leaving the grid would receive a penalty. So if we didn't have the chaos that forced me to make a new starting procedure, riders who went to get their spare bike in the pit lane with different tires would have served a ride-through penalty in the race. The way it happened on Sunday with so many bikes and so much confusion to get bikes and people off the grid, I called for a restart just in case, and they were very lucky to get away with it that way."
For the record: only three riders - Brad Binder, Enea Bastianini and Ai Ogura - had correctly chosen dry tyres for the original grid.
Webb, pointing out the imperfect knowledge of the regulations, then added: "It seems that the Marquez team did not expect a ride-through, they expected perhaps only to start from pit lane or the back of the grid. That's not the case: the rule says that by changing tyres like that, you regain your original starting position after the warm-up lap and you serve a ride-through in the race."
OK, so that was it. You all saw the video since it was posted on the Dorna website. And at this point we ask ourselves a question: when a video is stolen from which there is evidence of illegal behavior - this was not, let's be clear; everyone is free within the regulations to behave as they please - will Dorna make it public, will they pass it on to Race Direction for them to take action, or will they pretend that nothing has happened?
