The Deal With the Devil
The Catalan GP held a mirror up to the sport on Sunday. The reflection was horrific, deeply human, and impossible to look away from.
By Kent Gray
Pedro Acosta’s KTM suddenly dies beneath him at a speed approaching 225kmh. Head down and in the hottest of all pursuits of the race leader on lap 12 of the Catalan Grand Prix, Alex Márquez looks up from his tucked aero position to find nowhere to go.
The Spaniard instinctively swerves but the glancing blow off Acosta only serves to sends his baby blue Gresini Ducati careering onto the grass in auto-pilot mode.
Márquez is suddenly a passenger on his own machine not long after safely negotiating turn 9 at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. By turn 10, grass has given way to gravel and the inevitable transpires, the bike digging in before taking flight on a series of violent somersaults that shot-gun bike parts and bodies every which way.
Not long afterwards, medical personnel scramble to detangle Johann Zarco’s left leg which has been freakishly wedged in the rear tire of Pecco Bagnaia’s Ducati at turn 1 of the red flag restart. The gruesome scene plays out with Márquez’s ambulance barely out of the gate.
Dead air. That’s what broadcasters call it. TNT commentator Gavin Emmett was filling it as a long range helicopter view tried to put distance between the viewer and a fresh moment of uncertainty below that would see the Frenchman soon following the Spaniard to hospital.
Emmett asked the question that begged as a second re-start loomed.
“How honestly, how as a rider do you refocus? How do you do that?”
After all this.
“Because you’re so incredibly selfish,” Neil Hodgson said, cutting the tension with unexpected candour.
Amid the chaos, with bikes in bits, riders strewn in gravel traps, limbs akimbo, life uncertain, it took someone with a road racers’ DNA to make sense of it all.
The 2000 British Superbike and 2003 WorldSBK champion, TNT’s excellent lead pundit, knew exactly why.
The Answer
“This is your world, it’s all you focus on. I mean, if you were afraid, if you had fear about racing motorcycles, you wouldn’t do it,” the Brit said.
“You are well aware that racing motorcycles is dangerous. Of course you are. You have suffered injuries all throughout your career. It’s part of the job, and…”
Emmett interjected.
“As a retired rider now…has that changed your perspective on it?”
Hodgson’s response was part young racer with more trophies than scar tissue, part 52-year-old with a life lived outside of leathers.
“Massively now. I look back and think it’s crazy. You can’t believe it, like now, the rational side of my brain’s thinking, ‘oh, shall we just not bother racing?
“But I remember sitting there [in similar situations] thinking, ‘Right, great. I know I’ve got a new rear tire and a new front. My opponents might not.’
“That’s how your brain’s working, and you’re pumping yourself up to, ‘Right, just 12 laps [in the second restart]. Be aggressive.’ They’re the sort of thoughts going through your head.”
After Fabio Di Giannantonio had won the twice restarted race, the Italian somehow refocusing after being felled by the flying front wheel and fork off Márquez’s bike, TNT colleagues gave further evidence for the rider’s defence.
“As Neil explained in commentary so well, the riders, they are selfish,” said analyst and Moto3 owner Michael Laverty.
“They just spend that moment, obviously think about their fellow man, and hope they’re okay. And then you just refocus. You set your sights on the race ahead. You start worrying about hydrating, about what time the pit lane opens up and what tire’s going on.
“You have to compartmentalise, put that to the back of your mind, and move on. And everyone did it today, and that’s…it’s a fairly standard procedure for a rider. You are selfish. You are focused.”
The Mirror
We saw it in the gravel as Zarco lay trapped, at least till the TV cameras turned away.
Bagnaia and Luca Marini, taken down by the Frenchman’s braking miscalculation, rushed to their fellow rider’s aid and frantically waved for additional medical support. Then they sprinted back to pit lane to prep for the second restart on their reserve bikes, awful scene temporarily compartmentalised.
Selfish? Perhaps it’s more self-preservation. It’s not that rider’s don’t care, or that the fear isn’t real. The best just know they have to get back on the horse quickly because dwelling on the danger, what could happen, doesn’t bear thinking.
The Race
What is true about Sunday is that it was uncomfortably compelling viewing.
The racing before the calamity had been utterly absorbing, a masterclass in tire preservation being played out before your very eyes. Even after the red flags, it kept coming at you, like watching a car smash through open fingers when you know you shouldn’t look at all.
Jorge Martin being taken out by Raúl Fernández on the first lap of the second restart, a fifth crash of the weekend for the battered and bruised ‘Martinator’. The Spaniard physically and weirdly raging against his team in the Aprilia garage afterwards and later apologising on social media.
Acosta showing all his race craft till his tires finally screamed surrender under Digi’s late onslaught. And then, in a final twist, the young Spaniard cruelly denied points when Ai Ogura’s aggressive overtake on the final lap forced Acosta into the kitty litter.
In the end six riders penalised, three race starts, two stars in hospital, their campaigns indefinitely on ice.
Remember too that Marc Márquez wasn’t even at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the King of modern MotoGP recovering from his own surgeries following his big off at Le Mans the previous weekend. Watching his younger brother crash can’t have been easy and surely must have triggered his own “how do you refocus” after all that moment.
Di Giannantonio’s lucky escape and extraordinary courage to claim the chequered flag didn’t mean he was immune either.
The Italian kept on the glove on his injured left hand throughout the TV interviews, podium presentation and champagne ceremony. And his heart on his sleeve.
“I’m so happy but first of all I was really worried about all the riders [who] crashed, today has not been an easy day for everybody I guess, I really hope Alex is fine…we’ve been really lucky,” he said.
The appendage was so sore from the flying projectile that was Márquez’s wheel/fork that it nearly buckled under the weight of the winner’s trophy. Digi just saved it from dropping and then waved it one handed above his head with team owner Valentino Rossi watching on from below.
The champagne celebration was muted though and not just because he couldn’t open the bottle. Respect runs deep in the paddock at moments like these.
“We know our sport is amazing, we try to give an amazing show but also we are human, we are in danger so, I really hope that everybody is safe,” Di Giannantonio said before the racer within resurfaced.
“…but I am really happy about myself and my team, they have done an amazing job. We were looking for it [victory] since a long time so we must be proud and happy.”
The last word though belonged to Hodgson.
“If you ever wonder why these guys get paid so much, you watch today’s race [and] you’ll understand.”
MotoGP’s oldest truth remains its most uncomfortable one: the peril is inseparable from the awe. That’s the deal with the devil. Everybody knows the cost. Nobody can stop watching.
We certainly couldn’t look away. And we can’t wait for round 7, the Brembo Grand Prix of Italy at Mugello.
Storylines abound. Let’s just hope for a little less trauma in Tuscany.