Andrea Antonelli’s death during the Supersport round at Moscow naturally sparked more concerns and controversy over track safety and extreme weather conditions in which riders often are ‘forced’ to ride.
One of the questions that came up while everyone was anxiously waiting to hear of Antonelli’s conditions, was it correct to start the race on a track surface that the Superbike riders had already complained about, saying it wasn’t draining quickly enough.
Former five-time World champion Max Biaggi who is one of the most experienced riders in the world and even if he retired just last year, he still follows the World Superbike paddock as a technical commentator, and he was very harsh with Dorna and how they treat the riders in this series: This circuit should never been homologated, MotoGP would never race here.
I’ve never understood why if it isn’t good enough for the top class, it is for Superbikes.
Safety should never discounted, there shouldn’t be a B championship that riders are considered differently .
Dorna isn’t the only one invovled, because it is also the FIM who gives circuit homologation, and Russia was put on the calendar when the World Superbike championship was still in the hands of Infront who signed the contract with YMS Promotion Ltd.
Marco Melandri was used to having a riders safety commission when he was racing in GP believes that some of the blame has to be put on the shoulders of the riders who don’t do enough for safety: “Riders are stupid, and we can never can all agree on the same thing.
It is everyone’s fault, we have to sit down and talk and try to improve things.
Dorna’s CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta at Laguna Seca, said, “What happened is horrible, the authorities will tell us what happened, but there have been races when conditions have been worse.
We are always conscious about safety, here and there.
Our last sensation was that after the Supersport warm-up lap no rider raised his arm or said that it was too dangerous to race.
”While World Superbike boss Javier Alonso said, It’s not true that the wet conditions were that dramatic and that the asphalt wasn’t draining.
During the Superbike race when it started to rain, several riders raced on slick tires for 15 laps on the wet surface.
Pata Honda’s Lorenzo Zanetti who was involved in the incident and crashed into the stricken Antonelli said, “When I crashed the telemetry on the rear wheel indicated 255km/h.
I thought it was over, I saw the bikes whiz to my right, to my left, in a cloud of water ““It’s too late, a decision was to be made before starting.
Saying it after is too easy.
When you start, you go ahead … It’s not so much the pain but it’s the shock, the sadness, the anger, the desire to get back on track.
I’ll race for Andrea.
We were friends.
Friends and rivals, but also friends.
We started as kids, then we took different paths, in the end we came back to race together in Supersport.
I loved him because he was like me, not a show-off.
I have no intention of stopping.
No, it would be like killing him twice … I’ll be a Silverstone on August 4th, I’ll be there”The above is a fan video that gives a different view from what we saw on the original video.