by Mark
It has been a tragic week for motorsport. First the news that English born IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon was killed at the Las Vegas Speedway, at just 33, and now the tragic death of Marco Simoncelli at the Malaysian Grand Prix at the age of just 24.
Simoncelli’s death comes just over a year after another young talent was taken away from us, that of 19 year old Japanese rider Shoya Tomizawa, in September 2010 at the San Marino Grand Prix.
Tomizawa and Simoncelli both died in similar circumstances at different tracks but both doing exactly what they loved.
Tomizawa fell at a fast right corner on the San Marino circuit and was then struck by the bikes of Scott Redding and Alex de Angelis, Simoncelli fell at Sepang and was hit by the bikes of Colin Edwards and Valentino Rossi, neither instances could be avoided, but both are tragic.
Newly crowned 2011 MotoGP champion Casey Stoner said: “As soon as I saw the footage it just makes you sick inside. Whenever the helmet comes off that’s not a good sign.”
His team Dani Pedrosa said: “At times, we forget how dangerous the sport is. These are things that should not happen, but this is sport.”
The sport has seen safety improving year-on-year, with Tomizawa the first on-track death since 2003 when countryman Daijiro Kato was killed.
However the fact remains that motorcycle racing, be it MotoGP, motocross or even track days, is a dangerous sport and no-one knows that better than the racers themselves.
Riding a road going motorcycle is a dangerous hobby, riding 200mph+ prototype machines around race circuits doesn’t exactly make it any safer.
Advances in track safety, larger run off areas, air bags at track-side and in the rider’s leathers, have all helped, but the one thing that can’t be taken away is the very thing that the riders are using, the motorcycle.
When cars hit each other in sports like F1 and Touring Cars what they’re hitting is casing, metal on metal, or probably carbon fibre on carbon fibre. All the driver really feels is a jolt at most whilst they’re strapped into their bucket racing seats with their multi-point harnesses surrounded by a roll cage.
Sadly that’s not the case with motorcycles, when they hit each it’s carbon fibre hitting leather, hitting skin. If you’re lucky, and I use the term extremely loosely, you’ll land or be hit on the armour that is at your elbows, shoulders, back, knees, shins or chest.
But both armour and leather will only last so long, both are designed for two things: impact absorption and sliding time. If you want to know how good either are, check a riders knee-sliders at the end of each race and the state of their leathers if they’re unlucky enough to come off and slide down the track.
When tragedies strike questions will follow but we just have to hope they’re the right sort of questions and that knee-jerk reactions do not occur.
One other thing to ponder, when Tomizawa had his accident, Scott Redding contemplated quitting the sport altogether, such was the devastation he felt afterwards.
We obviously have no idea what’s going through Colin Edwards or Valentino Rossi’s mind at the moment but we hope neither contemplate walking away from the sport that has given us so many more happy powerful memories than the recent sad ones we’ve had to endure.
