—Do they understand the reason for the terrible accident?
—It seems that Dani's (Rivas) motorcycle loses power, he raises his hand and when everyone else is accelerating, he is decelerating and unfortunately a rider behind him crashes into him. It may happen that he looks forward or that, according to the rev counter to change quickly, he does not see the rider and crashes. We are talking about split seconds, and sometimes fatality occurs. And in this case, I, who am not one to agree with Laguna Seca Circuit, have nothing to say because everything is due to misfortune, bad luck, and tragedy... some stars have aligned this time to harm us.
—Does the RFME consider the safety protocol followed at Laguna Seca to be correct?
—We could ask ourselves, would they have had a helicopter in an AMA championship? Would they have had so many resources? Probably not, but here they had them because it is a World SBK event. And in that sense, we and they are very demanding.
—Motorcycling is risky, but there is always the question of whether these types of accidents during a start are unavoidable.
—We have tried everything. In these cases, it is a matter of visibility; normally, when a rider raises his hand, the two behind him see it and avoid it, the third one is the one who doesn't see it. Because the two in front were blocking the view. And I would like to remind you that a few years ago, there were even five riders in the same starting line. Then we went down to four, three, and that's where we are. What happens? When you go down to three, the advantage is that you see it from further away, but when you don't see it, it's much worse. Why? Because they distance themselves more and more, so the rider who started from the 10th row, when the first ones are going at 200 km/h, he is going at 230 km/h. Because, with the acceleration that motorcycles have, you go much faster, it's called the whip effect.
—Is there nothing that can be done?
—The first thing to accept is that it is a risky sport and sometimes we don't appreciate how much they are risking, when they all know it. And all of us who know this world are equally aware. It's, I don't know how to say it, like the mountain, we love it. And unfortunately, we go through these painful moments.
—Any lessons learned?
—We learn from every accident, don't doubt that we will sit down to try to improve. But we can go from four riders per starting line to three, two, or whatever, but the moment of the start is always complicated. And on a motorcycle, as the DGT ads say, we are the frame. It is a risky sport and obviously, we will try to improve. But it is complicated. You can twist and make changes, but when they reach 200 km/h in 500 meters... it's crazy.