Hi
At the moment I am really frustrated, due to many reasons.
One is that I am still longing for the raceseason to go off and up to speed. The other reason is….. Hmm, how to say it diplomaticly without getting sued.?? ( Maybe I should contact my lawyer first before wrighting this? )
The first race should be held at Sturup Raceway last weekend. ( That is good news. ) The track has been there for years, but it was the first time for motorcycles to be there racing. So we where 19 riders at the track and we saw something that you really don´t like when you ride motorcycle.
The track it self looked ok. Nice layout and quite twisty track. But with one mayor problem!! The safety for riders!!
For everybody how has never ridden a motorcycle in highspeeds at the limit fighting with a dussin of other racers with all body pumped up with adrenalin, it is not easy to talk about risks at tracks. But for us racers who has been in the business for some years, you really know what can happened and what will happened, when you less expect it to do so.
In that case you need safety around tracks. Run off areas, gravel pits etc, for our protection when misstakes happendes.
This was the problem last weekend at Sturup.
The real problem in this case was that the track was legalised by Svemo ( Swedish Motorcycle Asso. ), but all riders at place refused to race here right from the beginning.
After a lot of meetings due the weekend, all of us riders together with Svemo made a new inspection of the track and told our point of view and after that the track was cancelled for racing due to safety reasons.
There is some other aspects of this.
The track owner has invested a lot of money in safety and belived that his investments were good enough. And that was also the case before all 19 riders had inspected the track themselfs.
I really fell sorry for the owner of the track, I fell sorry for the STCC organisation and I feel sorry for the TV for not having anything to show on TV from motorcycle racing. I also fell sorry for the media and all the people coming to see all of us LIVE at the track.
BUT I WILL NOT PLAY WITH SAFETY!!!
If this must happended for saving lifes or stopping people to get really badly hurt, then there is noting to argue about. SAFETY must be the most important in our sport!!
We are stupied idiots anyway going out crashing and hurting ourselves at moments, but that is calculated risks that you know will be there. And we spend so much money for riding motorcycles and racing, just because it is the best thing in our lifes to do!! All of us can suffer much economicly and in other ways around, just for beeing able to ride motorcycles.
But if you start backing from safety once, than you will have big problems in the future.
Sad But True
Now, I will leave for Jerez in Spain for testing all the new sportbikes of the year.
Best Regards
Christer
