A note, credited to QJ Motors, has appeared out of nowhere, demanding the immediate dismissal of Manuel Gonzalez from the Gresini team, 'guilty' of wearing at Motegi a Hachimachi, the traditional Japanese fabric sash as a symbol of commitment and perseverance.
The reason is the erroneous parallelism between the symbol of the Land of the Rising Sun, and Japan's warrior past, which certainly did not leave good impressions in China and Korea.
To try and find out more, we directly questioned the Gresini team, which remained in Japan in advance of the Australian trip.
"We know about the controversy caused by this communiqué, the source of which we are ascertaining," the team spokesman told us, "nothing has officially reached us. We are verifying the source. We understand the disappointment of those in China, irrespective of who issued this note, who felt deeply at odds with the symbol. Obviously, we do not hold the rider responsible (headbands are sold everywhere in Japan, ed.), but we will apologize. Irrespective of the political correctness, if someone feels offended, it is right to apologize."
So far that is the response of the Gresini team. We wish to add, for our part, that this controversy is not new: it came about when Johann Zarco wore the helmet with the rising sun symbol. On several occasions Johann had been asked to change the design of the helmet, but Johann, keeping true to his being independent and not subject to pressure, to put it politely, had never given a damn.
Despite the symbols and the appearance of these to more or less unwelcome historical pasts, the important thing about this affair is to ascertain the source of this supposed QJ Motors statement. The QR code that can be seen in the upper right-hand corner of the Chinese script links to the WeChat app (the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp).
"Irrespective of the content, the message does not seem to be written by a person with knowledge of our contracts," added the Gresini team spokesperson.
So the mystery remains: who issued that communiqué, since the recipient - Team Gresini - did not officially receive it? Our colleague Simon Patterson also wrote about it, but also without indicating a certain source. After all, we are talking about the Qianjiang Group, which is headquartered in Wenling, 480 km from Shanghai and employs 14,000 people, producing 1,200,000 two-wheelers and more than 2 million engines annually. The plant covers an area of 670,000 square meters,
Can a group of this magnitude afford to issue such a statement in this way?
Just for the record, on the Hachimachi the inscription reads, "Ichi ban," which means number 1!
UPDATE - We checked and the release is indeed on the Chinese site of QJ Motor at this address. However, on the said site there is only the photo of the second rider of the Gresini team, Albert Arenas and not that of Gonzalez, who won the Japanese GP and is 6th in the world championship. While we understand the grievances of QJ Motors, we do not feel that the strategy adopted to communicate their discomfort is spot on. And this can be understood given the relative lack of experience in the racing world.
In cases like this one usually drafts a joint communiqué in which one side explains the reasons for the disappointment and the other side in turn makes its own statements, which may include formal delles cuses. A communiqué in which one demands the head of a rider, a worker, who, moreover, did what so many others did in the paddock at Motegi, does not seem to us to be exactly a politically correct move, since that is what we are talking about after all.
Sort of like when our former Speaker of the House, Laura Boldrini, called for the removal of the inscription Mussolini Dux from the obelisk that stands at the Foro Italico in Rome. Or to the tearing down of statues originally dedicated to dictators. History does not get torn down and, in some cases, is precisely a memento to the mistakes (and horrors) of the past.