In defense of the AMA Officials

I’m not sure letting the riders decide would be best, though could be very entertaining. 

I keep waiting for the thread “Next time you gripe about the WADA…”

🙄

Asking for a friend...

Has anyone on here ever red flagged a race for a facial laceration already checked out by one medic with 7 seconds left ,so that more medics could come and look at it too? 

They did the right thing. It sucks but is what is. 

Another one

It’s possible they didn’t know that he didn’t have other injuries at the time. 

If Max was the fastest guy, why didn't he win the race?  He started in the front, so traffic wasn't an issue.

Pretty sure leaving the 90% rule or just letting them go another 7 seconds would have been the better options. 
However, rules are made rules are changed. Some times we don’t realize how dumb the changes might be until something like this happens. 
So we can only hope that they learn from this. 
At least no one ran out of gas on the face of a jump doing an extra lap.

I’m pretty sure there must be a bottom line that reads similar to “at the discretion of the race director”

In which case, the race director really should have looked at the 7 seconds to go and called it a result. 

Can anyone clarify what was gained by canning the old 90% rule?

The right thing meaning throwing the red flag, or the right thing meaning the restart? Not having a go, just a genuine question.

I feel most fans don't have a problem with the red flag, it's the restart with 99% of the race done and drastically changing the outcome that doesn't sit well. Of course rules need to be followed, but there's also a common sense element that needs to be included in the decision making. 7 seconds is bad enough, imagine if it was 1 second, and Kyle Chisolm was 1 lap away from scoring an improbable victory in his final season. There needs to be common sense in the decision making 

Yep and I believe Pelletier  said  that they didn't look at the clock, 

Would be interesting if the radio traffic from the AMA ect.. at these races was made public. I'd assume that once they seen the clock, it was an OH SHIT moment. 

it took them 2 full laps to understand that they had to stop the race,that was one lap from the finish.........from one side, huge fail in the medical assist department, as usual !!!!!!........but on the other hand, they waited all they could to play their move, or a Britt would win  again..........

so in the end of the day all props to AMA,FELD and the medical crew, the downed rider was not badly hurt ( we all saw that one lap before the red flag)........and the Britt didnt win........

another great day of racing in the best and most professional series of supercross in the world .......

At the end of the day from Feld's perspective this is for entertainment of the paying customers. Can anyone say the race after the restart wasn't more entertaining to the casual fan than the last 3 laps before the red flag? I just hope a group of people aren't sitting in a room somewhere asking if they could do this every race.

Weege explained on the pulp review show it was to make a clear line , 90 % of 15 min plus one was a calculation , and up for interpretation , where when the clock ran out was definitive 

Only if Vince is near the top 5.

This^^^^

If Mac was ok to sit on the track for two full laps, another 7 seconds would have made no difference. The officials were not situationally aware, they didn’t look at the clock before calling for the red flag. 

Technically he may have still been the fastest on overall race times like they do in motogp. He just wasn't fastest in the last 3 laps which is what counts in this case.

Common sense means following the rules. I hate the outcome it sucks but you can not just wing it and disregard the rules. I would imagine that they will take a look at the rules and possibly make a change so that after a certain percentage of the race completed theycall it? The problem is either way some people would be mad that the race was cut short. 

I think they wanted to avoid having to argue semantics on what exactly 90% of the race meant in cases like this in the future. 90% of 15 minutes? How long is the lap time? What lap time do you use, average of the field, leaders best, or the last lap ran on the current track conditions? Once you figure out what lap time, where was the leader on the track when the flag was thrown? Was it actually 89.5% or 90.5%? 

PC and Star would be arguing this race to the death in the trailer if it wasn't a clearly defined time limit. Sucks Max got robbed, FWIW, I'm in favor of changing the rule to a set earlier time, like 13 or 14 minutes for 250s, then you also have to define the time for triple crowns... the current rule is the simplest and least open to interpretation, it just happened to blow up in their faces and end in heartbreak this time.

It looks pretty straightforward to me. With any restart they have a minimum of three laps to complete- green flag, white flag, checkers. So if there’s less than three laps left when the red flag flies, the race should be over.

With the way the current rule is, and how it played out in Detroit, the restart actually lengthened the race. Should be a simple commonsense rule rewrite, but AMA…..

I’m not sure why this keeps being brought up. I don’t think most racers and fans are upset we have rules.  The argument from me and I think most people is how dumb the rule is written and how long it took them to red flag the race. Tin foil hat on, I personally think they have the rule written like it is for the exact reason we saw Saturday night. It created drama and talk in what would’ve just been a ho hum 250 race. This “green, white, checkered” garbage is being adopted straight from nascar. 

😭😭

is that a trick question?? 

The current race duration of the 250 main is 15 minutes plus 1 lap. 

90% of 15 minutes is 13 mins 30secs. 

Let’s say ‘1 lap’ average is 1 minute, so 90% of that is 54 seconds. 

So by that calculation from the moment the gate drops, if the race is red flagged after 14 minutes & 24 seconds that would be called a result and not re-started. 

(In last weeks case, the race had run for 14 minutes and 53 seconds)


 

i just think the whole thing is funny. While the AMA hand-wrings over "Did he accelerate off track? was it too much? was it ok? did he cut the track? maybe? Oh man, this is a hard call!" to then turn around and say "Goddamn it - the rules state we must restart!!! i don't care that in 7s the race is over! Rules are rules!" is just kinda funny. the AMA barely knows what day of the week it is.

your making assumptions in that calculations,  as if the rider crossed 2 seconds before the 15 minters was up, they would do all but 15 min  plus 2 laps, what is  the 90 % then?

the current rule is very specific, and does not need assumptions for any race,  (mains, heats, LCQ's and triple crowns all have different lengths of time,

A couple of genuine questions …….

How many of you have been an AMA official on the floor of a Supercross race or AMA National Motocross race ? 

How many of you have put on high level racing events and dealt with a medical emergency ? 

Trying to understand some perspective. Not taking a stand on this situation. 

Blame the Astars medics, they are the ones who wanted a red flag after 2 minutes. 

Max’s race to lose after that restart though 🤷🏻‍♂️

Red flagging the race for a rider that took a gnarly crash and was knocked out is the correct move. It's easy to couch quarterback it and say "he was fine", "let the clock run off", etc. Rider safety takes priority, period.

The rules after that were stupid though and should be scrutinized heavily. Anstie had it in the bag. Whether the re-rack should be timed release or the race should be over because it was effectively over, Max got screwed and it should probably change. Deegan got screwed by it at Budds Creek a year or two ago too. The re-rack start is unfair to riders competing for a championship.