Simon Crafar’s stewards revelation still leaves questions unanswered

Debate over the last lap clash between Enea Bastianini and Jorge Martin at the MotoGP Emilia Romagna GP was renewed on Thursday in Indonesia.

Just four days on from the controversial conclusion to second Misano round, in which Bastianini forced Martin off track at Turn 4 on the final lap to take victory, the MotoGP paddock has assembled on the island of Lombok for the Indonesian GP.

But the conversation over what happened in Misano remains, with both Bastianini and Martin asked about it on Thursday in the pre-even press conference.

Unsurprisingly, Bastianini remains convinced he was in the right - which has been supported by the stewards, who took no action - while Martin still doesn’t agree with the lack of penalty.

One element of this that has drawn criticism was the apparent lack of investigation into the incident by the FIM stewards panel, helmed by double 500cc world champion Freddie Spencer.

One-time grand prix winner Simon Crafar, who will swap the Dorna microphone for the stewards room in 2025 as Spencer’s replacement, has shed some fresh light on what actually happened last Sunday and says there was an investigation.

“The stewards did investigate it,” he said on Thursday prior to the first press conference on motogp.com.

“They investigate everything. I’ve been spending a bit of time up there the last four Moto3 races and all Moto2 sessions during the weekend, and starting to understand what they do.

“In Misano, they have around 160 cameras - 50 dedicated for them alone, so they get to set up the positions.

“Plus all the IPF [international feed cameras], which is what we see on TV, and all of the circuit CCTV ones, which they use for track days and things like that.

“So, it’s just under 160 cameras. I’ve seen, from being up there, they investigate everything - meaning any time there is a nudge out there, they check it out.

“Every time someone is pushed off track. All the track limits has a dedicated team just for that. What I was getting that, is just because you don’t see ‘under investigation’ on the TV - because they don’t write it there - doesn’t mean they aren’t.

“They spend the whole warm down lap going through it, watching all the different angles and making a decision straight up.

“And their decision was the opposite of about 50% of the people was that it was no penalty.”

Crafar is correct in saying the stewards don’t issue TV tickers on race direction messages: that is handled by the broadcast production team when they have been given info to share.

Pramac boss Gino Borsoi revealed last weekend that his team did go to the stewards for an explanation on why it handled the incident the way it did, while Martin says he couldn’t get ahold of Spencer when he went to see him.

“I tried, I went to Race Direction, they were not there, I tried to see them later, they told me to talk to them tomorrow,” Martin told the Spanish media on Thursday at Mandalika. 

“I tried, but I couldn't. I want to talk to them, I don't want to do it during the weekend or before. I want to talk to them, I don't want to do it during the weekend or before a practice session, the moment was today (Thursday), but maybe we can find a time to do it.”

Unanswered questions

While Crafar’s insight has provided a welcome update on the situation, it still does leave questions unanswered.

If there was an investigation, why not state that in the first place? If the stewards quickly felt there was no need for punishment, it made no sense to withhold that information, with a simple ‘no further action’ message broadcast onto the world feed putting an end to this conversation completely.

It has been suggested by other members of the media that the stewards looked into the matter but didn’t necessarily feel it warranted a proper investigation. Given this was over a race win, that is surprising.

Fundamentally, though, the issue here isn’t whether there should have been a penalty or not. That really is a matter of opinion (and one that will come back to be analysed if it does have a big bearing on the title battle come Valencia). The key issue here is the lack of transparency on stewarding decisions and the rules of engagement with which they are operating to.

After the Emilia Romagna GP, both Martin and Pramac made it very clear that they see what Bastianini did as the acceptable limit as set out by the stewards. Therefore, they should not come in for punishment if they race to the same standards. That’s a fair enough reaction, and you can bet that everyone will be testing those grey areas as racers so often do.

Those who feel Bastianini should have been penalised do so largely because they saw him run off track too. Bastianini defended this by saying it was because he looked over to see if Martin had crashed (though, reasonably, he was more likely making sure Martin wasn’t going to be rejoining right next to him at speed).

In last lap battles, exceeding track limits does result more often than not in the offending rider dropping a position. However, that does only relate to run-off areas painted green. Those not painted green on a track are deemed not to offer a rider an unfair advantage for exceeding them. What Bastianini did there was fine.

But if the stewards felt what happened at Misano was not worthy of a thorough investigation, does a rider now simply have to look away from where they are meant to be going if they know they are running wide? Of course, stewards will have access to data should they need it - but that will depend on how much they feel it is necessary.

As we wrote in our initial analysis of the incident, the stewards at the end of every day release a document of every incident that was investigated and a brief explanation. We pointed towards a perfect example of how the stewards can take care of things without a deep investigation while also explaining its reasoning.

At the Spanish GP, Johann Zarco bumped Pedro Acosta wide at Turn 5 on the first lap. The contact was clear and Acosta lost one spot to Zarco. But because Zarco was deemed to have “corrected this himself by the following sector” he was never instructed to drop a place, as would have been the punishment had it gone any further.

That’s it. That’s all the stewards needed to do on Sunday at Misano to put to bed something as controversial as that last lap.

Four days later, we now know they looked into it the incident. But we still don’t know why they came to the decision that they did or why they didn’t communicate that.

At the very least, future steward Crafar - someone very comfortable in front of a TV camera explaining complex things about motorcycle racing - has demonstrated that he is the right person to improve the transparency issue the current panel has cultivated for too long.