This weekend’s race in India is full of unknowns. Will the rider’s get their Visas? Will anyone turn up to watch? What will the weather be like? But the main question in everyone’s mind is the safety aspect…or lack of it.
So we at MotoGPNews have cobbled together a list of the most dangerous aspects of the this weekend’s event that the rider’s may encounter.
The track
The idea of ‘safe’ in India means something completely different than in does in the western world. For example a road is deemed ‘safe’ in India if there hasn’t been more than ten fatalities on it that morning.
So it only stands to reason that the brand new Buddh International Circuit may have a few worryingly overlooked safety concerns. But wait ‘what about the MotoGP safety commission’? Surely they’d not sign off a track that was dangerous?
India has a lot of money. Or at least the rich folk do. They acquire this lovely cash by ensuring the country’s poverty gap is kept comically huge. And with money comes persuasion… If India wants a MotoGP race to look good then they’ll get one.
Killed travelling to the track
As mentioned above Indian roads are dangerous. India has a population of 1.4 billion and at least half of these folk are killed every day trying to cross the road or being runover by a truck whilst riding a scooter the wrong way down a road.
Worse still are the cows. Cattle in India are not seen as walking bags of deliciousness but instead sacred and representing mother earth. They are allowed to walk where they want and do what they want without question – like Trans people in California. Hitting a cow in India is a terrible crime that usually results in a public beating. Because of this the crazy Indian drivers will swerve wildly to avoid hitting a cow in the middle of the road instead choosing to hit and kill a pedestrian – a far lesser crime that’s traditionally overlooked.
So unless our MotoGP riders are camping trackside the journey to the track could very easily result in a crash…an additional worry that serial gravel-hermit Jack Miller doesn’t need.
Food poisoning
Everyone that visits India gets food poisoning to some degree. Whether it’s just a cheeky case of dysentery or a full-on case of terminal rectal seepage a trip to the overpopulated South Asian country will be one you’ll never forget.
The reasons so many visitors suffer from food poisoning are a mystery. Some analysts suggest the wide range of spices used in their cuisine can overwhelm the stomach. Other state that the country’s high humidity has an effect on the body’s ability to process food correctly. Whereas other point to the fact that raw sewage runs down the street side, rats are commonplace, no one ever washes their hands, and everything is disgustingly filthy. I guess we’ll never know for sure.
What we do know is all the riders will suffer in some way. Race day-diarrhoea might sound funny but in the predicted sweltering heat a rider could become dangerously dehydrated. Worse still should any bum seepage work its way down the rider’s leg and onto the track it could bring a new dimension to having a crap race.
Hit by a cricket ball
The Indians love cricket even more than the Scottish love being miserable bastards. Huge armies of brown kids will crowd outside a barber’s shop just to catch a glimpse of their favourite cricket star having his facial hair trimmed to the same length as his wife’s.
The intense, country-wide passion for a sport that’s so fundamentally awful and mind-numbingly monotonous has been studied by many scientists giving rise to the ‘Bombay Paradox’ theory.
Such fanatism leads to lots of games continually being played by children in and around the slums…and that leads to a lot of cricket balls being launched into the air. It’s estimated that every 3 seconds in India a wayward cricket ball hits and critically injures a street food vender in Bangalore alone. With those odds it stands to reason that an unlucky rider, such as Miguel Oliveira, will be hit on the back of the napper several times in a weekend.
Insomnia
Car horns don’t ever stop in India. All road drivers must press their horn every three seconds on their car/bike/truck/horse/wheelbarrow or face horrendous fines. No one knows why they do this – but if it’s for safety reason then the government may want to reexamine this.
The outcome is that horns are the first part to break on any vehicle in India. It also means anyone visiting the country can never, at any time, get a decent night’s kip.
Paint in the peeper
India loves a festival. They have festivals for all their thousands of Gods – even the rubbish ones like the one with ten faces that picks his scabs and leaves them on public transport.
Some of these festivals involve throwing loads of coloured powered around to help the pick pocketers work more efficiently. Should one of these festivals be happening at the time the MotoGP riders are in town then you can bet that a rider like Marc Marquez (who historically gets stuff in his eye) will be blinded by a handful of dayglow, chemically-rich powder thrown in his face.
Hit by a space rocket fragment
Recently India entered the space race by sending an unmanned rover to land on the moon. What’s more impressive (and somewhat unsurprisingly) is they did it on the cheap. Their entire budget was said to be around 100 Rupees –less than the country’s average telephone scammer makes in an hour.
The downside to such an impressive feat is that corners may have been cut and safety once again overlooked. And although the latest flight was a success the ones before have been less so.
Should India decide to fire up a new Luna rocket that they knocked together over the previous weekend then chances are some, if not all, of it will come crashing down to the earth’s crust in a mass fireball.
Usually when this happens it just lands on some poor people so all’s fine – but if a section of booster rocket landed on the head of an unlucky rider (and once again we point the finger at Miguel Oliveira) it could be an early end to his race weekend. And their career.