Leon Haslam disqualification.

I haven't seen any comments in this group about Leon Haslam's
disqualification from the 2nd BSB race at Oulton Park. James Haydon
on the Channel 4 coverage was of the opinion that it was a mistake by
Leon, but not one that he'd like to see penalised (this was before
Leon was disqualified). I tend to agree with him, even though Leon
seems to have been a bit lairy this season. Anybody else got any
views? I'd be particularly interested in what people who actually race
themselves think.

Cheers,

 

Well, I qualify on the last bit.

I replayed it several times, and it was a 'mistake' in the sense that
Haslam screwed up, but I think it does deserve some sort of
punishment. It seems fairly obvious that the move was never going to
work, and I think at that level one should expect a certain amount of
professionalism.

This is in contrast to my view on the Checa / Neukirchener (sp?) crash
in WSB this year. In that incident, I felt that Checa had got past
before Neukirchener crashed, and that it was a 'racing incident'.

I guess that this shows that these things are pretty finely balanced,
and it's rarely possible to make an absolute judgement.

 

Disclaimer: I don't race.
I'm not convinced by Leon. He's obviously got some skills. But he also
makes way too many mistakes. He's lost a couple of championships now
because of this. At Thruxton he was pushing people off the track even
before the Sykes incident. With Sykes it was really hard to tell if Leon
pulled across him, or if he was just following the obvious line for the
next corner and Sykes should have allowed room for somebody who was
already past. But at Oulton, it was more like ramming the guy. The move
was just never going to work.

I think the suspension maybe is a bit harsh. But I also think he needs
to be taught a bit of a lesson and a bit of an example made to stop it
all getting out of control. It's a fine line because we expect people to
make hard passes at this level, but you're not supposed to make hard
passes that result in the other person crashing.

 

That's the problem really. In the Checa incident I seem to recall that
Neukirchner was injured, and missed the second race, but I guess these
things have to be judged on intent rather than outcome. For people of
a certain age these incidents always brings one mind back to Capirossi
knocking Harada off in the 250 championship decider. At the time I
thought Loris was well out of order, but then read interviews with
various racers, including Niall Mackenzie (who I always, rightly or
wrongly, considered pretty mild-mannered), who all said that they
would have done the same as Capirossi. Mind you that was on the final
lap of the final race of a World Championship. Perhaps the punishment
for Haslam was partly due to cumulative incidents?

Cheers,

 

Not forgetting that Haslam had also "taken out" Sykes at Thruxton, the
meeting before. Previous form and all that, and the organisers wanted to
put a stop to it. Maybe.

 

Here is the Capirossi / Harada incident , I hadnt seen it for years , but it
certailny was much worse than a racing incident !


shaun

 

I did some googling to try and check whether Aprilia had publicly
commented on whether their sacking of Capirossi was down to this
incident, but couldn't find anything other than Capirossi sued Aprilia
for breach of contract. I couldn't find the result of this legal case
either. My Google Fu is weak. However I did find the following FIM
statement about re-instating Capirossi after initially disqualifying
him:

http://www.fim.ch/EN/Magazine/MAG27/Case Capirossi.htm

Cheers,