You thought that all the controversy surrounding Max Biaggi’s ride-through penalty at the Monza round had finally been laid to rest? Believe me it hasn’t.
The official Superbike website has released these two closed circuit videos of how Monza’s Prima Variante (first chicane) should be cut in case of running off track, which in the first video shows Leon Haslam and Ayrton Badovini doing it correctly and in the second the mistake that Biaggi made, which got him the penalty.
And if this isn’t enough to settle things, Race Director Paolo Ciabatti (who probably needs bodyguards these days to walk around Italy) has gone as far as writing an open letter to Max Biaggi’s fans (who want heads to roll for this perceived injustice) and the rest of us Superbike fans.
Check out the second video after the jump along with the letter.
I kindly ask you to devote a couple of minutes of your time to this letter of mine, in which I would like to explain the facts that occurred at Monza during the weekend of May 8th.
First of all Monza is not like any other track, and Superbike has to share it with an extremely important event like Formula 1.
It is simply not possible therefore to have gravel run-off areas at the chicanes because this solution does not go down particularly well in Formula 1.
The only exception to this is the Variante Ascari.
As can easily be imagined, if a rider makes a mistake on the entry to the Ascari and ends up in the gravel, either he crashes or he loses a lot of time in returning to the track, so in this particular case it is not necessary to adopt any special measure for the chicane.
The question of the first chicane (the Prima Variante) and the Roggia chicane is different, as they have tarmac run-off areas.
For the last three years at Monza white lines have been painted in these areas.
The lines take the form of a ‘funnel’ that ends with a ‘pathway’ about one metre wide that, if followed by the rider, forces him to slow down and return to the track outside the natural line of all those riders who have gone through the chicane in a normal way.
FIM homologation of the track specifically rules out the presence of barriers/straw bale chicane in the run-off areas.
The Race Direction, of which I form part together with Igor Eškinja and Giulio Bardi, for this reason decided to convene all riders on Thursday afternoon for an extraordinary briefing to explain to everyone (those who had already raced at Monza and those who were encountering the circuit for the first time) the correct way to return to the track in case of a mistake in these two chicanes.
The briefing lasted almost one hour.
It was explained to riders, with the help of two giant blow-up images of the chicanes hung on the walls of the briefing room, that if they made an error, the only way, with absolutely no exception whatsoever, to return to the track was to use this ‘funnel’ path, otherwise they would be penalized with a ride-through.
We also explained that they must gain no advantage from cutting through the chicane, either in their lap time or in their race position, and that in this latter case by raising their arm they would have surrendered that position to riders whom they had unintentionally overtaken.
Many riders posed specific questions and we repeated over and over again that any rider who returned to the track without respecting the pathway painted on the tarmac would be punished with a ride-through penalty, the only sanction foreseen by the FIM for these infringements of the rulebook.
Biaggi was not present at the briefing, due to his private commitments, but he was represented by Francesco Guidotti, the Aprilia Team Manager.
Throughout the entire weekend we always used the same criteria with respect to every rider who cut through the chicanes, in every category.
These are the facts.
Probably I will not have been able to convince many of you, but at least I have clearly and honestly explained the way things went.
I would like to conclude on a personal note.
In life sometimes coherence and correctness force one to take difficult and painful decisions.
For me Max is not only a great champion, as well as an intelligent and sensitive person.
He is above all a friend, one with whom I have shared many moments, pleasant but also difficult, both on and off the track.
I will leave it to you to imagine how difficult it must have been for me, together with the other members of the Race Direction, to take this decision.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Paolo Ciabatti