American Motorcycle Association’s Director of Racing, Mike Pelletier, joined Jason Weigandt and Jason Thomas on this week’s edition of SMX Insider to explain why Tom Vialle and Haiden Deegan incurred different results after they both rode off course last week in 250 competition at Fox Raceway in Pala, California.
Vialle was penalized one position for failing to slow and reentering the track unsafely in Moto 1. Deegan was not penalized for either of the two instances when he left the track in Moto 2.
“I’d like to start by the rule itself,” Pelletier said. “It’s very specific, there’s really three main aspects to the rule, right? Did the rider, when he goes off track, did he gain a time or position advantage? That’s one. Did he fail to slow down? That’s two. And did he accelerate in an unsafe manner? That’s three. It doesn’t mean that all three need to line up for a penalty.”
Race direction determined that Vialle did not slow after he left the course and did not properly assess the situation upon jumping back onto the course.
“It’s important, I think, for everybody to know we have a lot of footage behind the scenes, not just the broadcast footage, right?,” Pelletier said. “So we can pull the drone footage, different camera angles. We go as far back to see his previous lap. You know, how much time did it take him in that section? The segment times, all of that’s really dissected. ... So as race direction reviewed when Haiden went off the racetrack, he did assess. He looked around. We felt that he did break race pace, and for sure he lost time, based off our footage. So, those three areas is what we assessed and decided no penalty.”
Deegan won both motos at Fox Raceway to score the overall victory.
In response to criticism drawn to AMA for the length of time before announcing their decision, Pelletier explained they could only look at the 250 footage after the 450 race.
“We try to do it as fast as we can, but it’s more important to use all the footage and all the data points we want to look at,” Pelletier said. “It’s important to get it right. And that takes time to do. Now, we’re working on trying to do that faster. But again, with all the interviews we want to do and all the footage we want to receive and look at and view and assess, that just takes some time and that’s what took so long.”
A panel of officials and industry members review these actions each week. At Fox Raceway, Pelletier was joined by former Suzuki factory mechanic Tim McAdams and 450 rider John Short.
Short competed at Fox but failed to advance out of the Last Chance Qualifier after finishing 16th.
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