(Photo: Getty Images)

Last year at Portugal, just as Jorge Lorenzo was accusing Marco Simoncelli of being a dirty rider, I did an interview with former, now retired, Race Director Paul Butler (the three-part feature can be found in the related links at the opening of this article) in which he loosed a wonderful phrase: "Motorcycle racing is a contact sport."

Lorenzo was furious and so were some others in the paddock, but Butler, who was team manager for Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey, and John Kocinski, with eleven world titles among them, knows what he is talking about. Butler, in his final season, had to deal with a difficult situation and, in my opinion, he handled it perfectly when he handed out the Le Mans ride-thru, for all the right reasons. Paul also missed a couple of calls in his earlier years. There is no way for a Race Director not to learn on the job.

But that is another story.

And there are echoes in the air of the Simoncelli situation of 2011. Once again, as last year with the late Simoncelli, a Grand Prix rider has begun to acquire a reputation for dangerous maneuvers and Race Direction has stepped in at first with mild warnings and later with a relatively heavy hand to try and restore order, right wrongs, and interpret intentions on the basis of the only evidence possible, a combination of video recordings and rider "testimony" from the motorcycle racing equivalent of an F1 "steward’s inquiry."

Fans and riders alike look for consistency in rulings, but the question that arises from both the sanction applied to Simoncelli at during the French GP at Le Mans last year and the sanction imposed but then provisionally lifted on Márquez at the recent GP of Catalunya, is whether these rulings were made on the basis of an individual incident or whether they were the culmination of a series of perceived infractions.

And the bigger question, if we assume that Race Direction reacted to Simoncelli's encounter with Dani Pedrosa and Márquez's brush with Espargaró because of a series of previous incidents, we are entering into an implied process of "the accumulation of yellow cards" (soccer parlance for repeated warnings). Is this a proper way to conduct the imposition of order and justice in motorcycle roadracing, or should a rider, regardless of how many incidents he has been involved in, still be considered innocent until proven guilty?

Another question that arises is whether the FIM sporting code is, in fact, applied uniformly to all FIM-sanctioned World Championship roadracing.

Fans who watched the final lap of the second World Superbike round at Donington Park some weeks back and who also witnessed the conclusion of the Moto2 race at the Grand Prix of Catalunya, will have observed the very different reactions of Race Direction at these two FIM-Sanctioned events, both World Championship rounds of the parallel series.

At Donington, BMW riders Leon Haslam and Marco Melandri were taken out when Honda Ten Kate rider Johnny Rea saw a gap and went for it on the final corner, bumping Haslam, who was leading. Haslam's entry into the money corner, a slow left-hand hairpin, had been spoiled when teammate Melandri made an ill-judged lunge up the inside and went past Haslam, but on a wide, hopeless line. That caused Haslam to get out of the throttle and lift just enough to kill his drive and open the door to Rea, never shy about accepting open invitations.