Being a referee in any sport isn’t an easy job. If you do your job right, you remain largely anonymous, barely known to those watching at home. But if you don’t – or even if you’re just deemed to have not done it right – then you’re going to catch all sorts of anger, especially in an age of social media where everyone has both an opinion and a way to share it.
Yet, for the rule enforcers in any sport, public criticism (and indeed, critics in the media too) are just part of the job in the modern era, something that you can put behind you and ignore as long as you’ve got the respect you need: from the people who you’re adjudicating.
And that right there is where MotoGP has a huge problem right now, because the FIM MotoGP Stewards Panel, led by past 500cc world champion Freddie Spencer, seems to have unequivocally lost all respect from the riders that it governs.
It’s a crisis that’s been brewing for years, with the lack of respect both given by the riders and tolerated by the stewards not exactly a new thing: it’s been two years now since Jack Miller called them as ‘c***s’ in a media debrief and escaped completely unsanctioned for the extraordinary outburst.
But following the actions of Taka Nakagami in last weekend’s Catalan Grand Prix at Barcelona, fresh attention – and derision – has once again been poured upon the panel, with aggrieved Suzuki rider Alex Rins crossing a new line and becoming the first racer on the MotoGP grid to publicly call for them to be replaced.
“It’s unacceptable,” he raged after Nakagami escaped unpunished for knocking off both Rins and Pecco Bagnaia in the opening corner. “We cannot go like this. The race direction, the stewards, make zero sense what they say.
“For sure, and today they demonstrated it on TV, the stewards are not on the level of MotoGP.”
But Rins went further still, when asked about riders being frequently at odds with the stewarding regime for so long yet it going unchanged.
“In this safety commission I showed to all the riders and Mike Webb, the race director, I showed the action [previous Nakagami crash] that happened in Mugello.
“Some riders were saying yes, Taka’s fault, others were Rins‘s fault, OK… but then everybody started to talk about the stewards.
“For sure they are not doing well their job. It’s obvious. It’s obvious.
“For sure I will put pressure to do it [make changes]. I don’t know what they can do. But they need to change. All the three guys. It’s clear.”
While you can look at the Barcelona incident and rule it, as the stewards and many armchair experts did, as a racing incident, that highlights one of the two big issues: consistency. While it’s possible to see their perspective that it didn’t meet the “established threshold for such incidents” it’s much harder to argue why plenty of previous incidents, especially in Moto2 and Moto3, were punished when this one wasn’t.
Take, for example, the long-lap penalty handed to Johann Zarco at Brno in 2020 for riding his line when Pol Esaprgaro ran wide then rejoined and collided with him, or the Frenchman’s subsequent pitlane start for colliding with Franco Morbidelli at the Red Bull Ring’s ferocious Turn 2, a move where many more people believed that blame was more fairly split between all parties.
But here’s the thing: every incident is different, something every race observer understands. And as such, not every one deserves the same sanction.
That brings us to what is arguably the even bigger issue with the stewarding panel: the flow of information out of it.
It’s one thing to fail to construct a dialogue with the media, even if it has been common practice in certain other motorsport series. And while Formula 1 has perhaps felt the consequence of making Michael Masi the public face of its race control regime before he was removed, the stewards’ decisions there continue to be made public in detailed form and it’s understood Masi’s replacements do plan to resume the media briefings he personally held to explain his decisions, something his respected predecessor Charlie Whiting also used to semi-regularly do.
In MotoGP, however, the standard communication simply states which rule has been broken and which penalty has been handed down. Requests for comment (something The Race always submits) are either rejected or ignored.
Even on Sunday at Barcelona, when the amount of criticism the stewards faced did force the series into a comment, it didn’t come from the FIM or IRTA (the teams’ association that technically employs Spencer) but from series promotor Dorna, buried inside a race recap press release. If that is to be standard practice from now on when penalties need explaining, at least we now know to look out for it.
In fact, so bad has the lack of communication been of late, even the news that former permanent steward Bill Cumbow had been replaced by Spaniard Andres Solominos for 2022 hadn’t been formally announced, with The Race only discovering this when the news was relayed by a source inside the FIM.
But a lack of communication with journalists is one thing. Doing it to riders and teams is a whole other – and that’s where the lack of respect from riders really originates. Rins says his initial query about the Nakagami incident at Mugello was met with no more than a shrug – and he’s not alone in having relayed an experience like that. It’s hard to improve when you can’t get an explanation of what you’ve done wrong.
It’s a problem that really goes back to Spencer’s appointment in 2018. But as it continues and continues, it infuriates more and more riders – and it means that the relationship between them and the stewards is now so toxic that it’s not easy to see any way out of the mess beyond heeding Rins’ words and finding someone new to take over the role.
If it does come to appointing a replacement, it’s probably important to remember something else too: not many sports find their referees among the pool of retired competitors. Ex-Premier League goalscorers don’t suddenly become match day officials, no rugby internationals are manning the television match official screens.
Being a referee is something that takes a unique set of skills. If riders like Rins are right that Spencer and his current colleagues don’t have them, that’s not necessarily their fault. But those appointing the panel need to either fix that situation or (if it’s even possible) take steps to repair the current fractured relationship between stewards and riders, and the sooner the better for the sake of the sport.
