Is MotoGP’s New Safety Regulation Putting Riders in More Danger?

Fermin Aldeguer lowsided his Ducati last weekend during Friday's practice, but instead of letting it go and sliding into the gravel, he hugged it and let it drag him across the track, causing the rider behind to take evasive action. Holding on to a bike like this and letting it pull you across the track is eerily similar to the way MotoGP lost Simoncelli. You can check out the crash below.

To be fair, riders keeping the clutch pulled after going down isn't new, and the current world champion has made it work for him plenty of times. But this instance at Le Mans was so clearly incentivized by the new rule that it's worth considering if riders will put themselves in more danger by holding on during crashes when they might otherwise have let go and bump-started the bike previously.

We should also consider at what point during a race weekend riders are most incentivized to keep the bike running so they can hop straight back on: qualifying. More crashes happen during qualifying than during the race, even though the combined length of both sessions is less than a full race. Riders are pushing hard with no time to spare to go down service roads to rejoin, and others behind them are pushing just as hard and have very little time to react to a bike careering across the track.

None of this is to say the old rule was safer, but rather to acknowledge that MotoGP riders will look for every advantage and the current ruleset might incentivize riders to hold on at time they previously would've conceded defeat and tried to bump start the bike. It's food for thought and our comment section below.