MotoGP nepotism: it’s a family affair 

MotoGP

MotoGP’s new safety officer and likely new permanent steward are the nephew and his partner of the Dorna CEO, whose children already play leading roles in the championship. There’s a simple word for running a business like this…

Dorna press conference headed by Ezpeleta

Tomé Alfonso Ezpeleta, Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta, FIM president Jorge Viegas and Franco Uncini in today’s media conference

Oxley

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Fifty years ago, in the early 1970s, too many riders were getting killed, too many riders and families were bankrupting themselves trying to make it, while the fat-cat race promoters got rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Now too many riders are getting killed, too many riders and families are bankrupting themselves trying to make it, while Dorna bosses get rich beyond their wildest dreams.

It wasn’t always like this.

From the early 1980s circuit safety standards started improving, along with grand prix prize money, with the biggest increases going to riders nearer the back of the grid, who didn’t earn the hefty salaries of the front-runners.

So the world championship got to the point where privateers could just about make GP racing pay and have a good chance of making it to the end of their careers in one piece.

Between 1989 and September 2010 there were two deaths in MotoGP. In May 1993 Nobuyuki Wakai died during the Spanish GP at Jerez, where a fan walked out on front of him in pit lane. Wakai crashed into the pit wall and died from head injuries. In April 2003 Daijiro Kato died after sustaining multiple injuries in a high-speed crash during the Japanese GP at Suzuka. That’s two deaths in 21 years.

In the 12 years since September 2010 there have been four deaths in GP racing: Shoya Tomizawa at the 2010 San Marino GP, Marco Simoncelli at the 2011 Malaysian GP, Luis Salom during the 2016 Catalan GP and Jason Dupasquier at last year’s Italian GP.

And it’s worse than that. During the last five years five riders have died in Road to MotoGP events and WSSP300 races at World Superbike rounds: Andreas Pérez in a 2018 Moto3 junior world championship race, Afridza Munandar in a 2019 Asian Talent Cup event, Hugo Millán in a 2021 European Talent Cup Moto3 race, Spaniard Dean Berta Viñales in a 2021 WSSP300 round and Victor Steeman in another WSSP300 race earlier this year.

Pecco Bagnaia leads at MotoGP Phillip Island round

MotoGP at its best: Pecco Bagnaia leads the battle royal at Phillip Island last month

Michelin

Last month in the Australian GP Moto2 race another rider came close to losing his life in the same manner. Jorge Navarro crashed and was hit by the rider immediately behind. The Spaniard broke his left femur in the accident and severed the femoral artery, which can cause such massive blood loss that it can lead to death in just a few minutes.

Nonetheless the race was not red-flagged. Navarro was unable to move and stayed by the side of the track for several minutes, in the firing line of any rider who had the same accident, while he waited for a medical team to stretcher him away. Luckily, the 26-year-old Spaniard’s fracture was not a compound fracture – in which the broken bone pierces the skin – so he ‘only’ suffered internal bleeding, which slowed the blood loss. This probably saved his life.

All of these accidents (with the exception of Salom) were essentially the same – a rider falls in the middle of a tightly packed group and is struck by following motorcycles who are too close to take avoiding action. This is the result of technical regulations written to create close, more exciting racing, with the idea of growing the sport to a bigger audience and, of course, making more money.

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In other words, top-level motorcycle racing finds itself in a very tricky position, with death rates rocketing, despite decades of tireless work by Dorna, IRTA, the FIM (Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme) and others to improve circuit safety and riding gear. And neither super-safe circuits or super-trick riding gear can save anyone when they are struck by several hundred kilos of rider and machine travelling at high speed.

Therefore there’s not much that can be done about these accidents, except breaking up the packs, which means making the racing less close and therefore less exciting and most likely less profitable.

This is a huge problem, but there are other things going on within the upper echelons of MotoGP that are also very worrying, from safety and other points of view.

Today at Valencia, MotoGP announced the appointment of a new MotoGP safety officer, following the retirement of 67-year-old former MotoGP world champion Franco Uncini.

Jorge Martin leads at MotoGP Sepang round

Jorge Martin leads last time out at Sepang

Michelin

The new safety officer is Tomé Alfonso Ezpeleta, who was in charge of the Losail and Aragon MotoGP venues and is now preparing the Kazakhstan Grand Prix.

If his name sounds familiar it’s because it is. This Ezpeleta is the nephew of Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta, whose son Carlos plays a leading role in MotoGP Race Direction and whose daughter Ana is director of Dorna’s talent promotion, which runs the numerous Road to MotoGP championships around the world.

And it goes further, while nephew Ezpeleta become MotoGP’s safety officer his partner Tamara Matko is set to become a permanent member of the FIM MotoGP Stewards Panel, presiding over rider conduct during race weekends and therefore handing out penalties and sanctions.

There is a word for this kind of operation: nepotism. And, funnily enough, the root of the word is the Italian word for nephew – nipote – which was used to describe the ancient habit of popes bestowing privileges on their ‘nephews’ (who, purely from a historical point of interest and certainly not applicable to the Ezpeletas, were usually their illegitimate sons).

Nepotism isn’t a healthy way to run a business. Never has been. Even more than 2000 years ago philosophers Aristotle and Confucius condemned the practice of giving unfair favouritism towards relatives.

The Ezpeleta family now bestrides MotoGP: from the commercial side of running the championship (which is Dorna’s primary job), to playing a major role in the actual running of the races and now to overseeing the safety of the riders and punishing riders.

To call these final parts of the Ezpeleta family’s rule of MotoGP a conflict of interest would be an understatement, because you cannot have the same family overseeing the commercial aspects of the sport, as well as safety and rider contact aspects, which is why they are both jobs awarded by the FIM (Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme), not Dorna.

However, the fact the sport’s governing body gave nephew Ezpeleta his new job and looks set to give his partner a job, begs further questions regarding the uncomfortably close relationship between the various bodies that run MotoGP.

Motorcycling is a wonderful sport and its world championships should not be a family fiefdom.

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