Loris Reggiani: 'The judges wanted to reopen the world championship'….

15/7/2003
REGGIANI:"THE JUDGES WANTED TO REOPEN THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP"

Rossi's "relegation" to 3rd place and Biaggi's victory
in the British GP he continues to cause discussion. Loris Reggiani, manager of
Marco Melandri is perplexed: "It was a compromise: the judges
they satisfied everyone, including sponsors, and restored interest in the World Championship
– he told TGCOM – Rossi's infringement, however, could not be ignored."
Then an accusation: "The fact that they change judges at every competition is amateurism."

The echoes of the Grand Prix jury's decision have not yet died down
of Donington, which penalized Valentino Rossi by 10" and relegated him
in third place and effectively handing the victory to Biaggi ahead of Sete Gibernau.
Loris Reggiani has clear ideas and defines the one adopted by the jury as "Una
compromise solution".

Valentino Rossi harshly attacked Sito Pons, who he defined as "un
clever, who did not respect the normal appeal procedure". Then he closed
his attack with a "mafiosi" which caused a lot of discussion. She
How do you see what happened at Donington?
"I don't think it's as Valentino says, Pons didn't do things normally
complaint because the race direction was already thinking about it. In
plus the friendship that exists between Pons and the judges, who were Spanish,
facilitated the information channel between them. But I wouldn't give it
faults and I wouldn't talk about mafiosi. Pons would have made an official complaint and it would be
Anyway, it ended like this."

But what does the regulation provide in these cases?
"There are no precise regulations, it is at the discretion of the management
of competition. They can decide to give 5", 10" or more, and this time
they opted for 10. This is what leaves the time it finds, but it is also
It's true that the infringement occurred and could not be ignored, it was created
a precedent. In the end a compromise was found: they shortened
the World Championship ranking, they satisfied Rossi's sponsor who is
went to the podium and didn't do much damage."

In your opinion, would electronic flags solve the problem?
"Of course yes, you could put colored lights on the dashboard
of the bike, the riders would certainly see them. It's something doable, they're doing it
already something similar for timing, by mounting a control unit a
board the motorbikes".

The situation, however, has revived the age-old problem of juries, which are
different for each GP.
"And it's stupid, an antediluvian thing, friendship still counts,
the commissioners are chosen from among friends of friends, and so, which is
even more serious, for the medical service. It's a question of education
and professionalism. I'll give you an example: a few years ago Melandri lost
the 125 World Championship by one point because he crashed in Valencia while he was second
and tried to get the motorbike back. The commissioners, inexplicably, prevented him
to take the bike back even if everything was fine and the rider was fine. Look
case Alzamora won... If there were always the same people they would avoid each other
dammit...".

Source: Tgcom.it