The True Cause of the Tragic Accident at the Start of the 1973 250Cc Italian GP at Monza
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The True Cause of the Tragic Accident at the Start of the 1973 250cc Italian GP at Monza. On the 20th May 1973 there was a horrific crash at the first corner of the 250cc Italian GP held at the historic Monza track. From the flag the pack of riders accelerated down the main straight towards the Curva Grande, a kilometre from the start. On a Yamaha TD3, it would normally be taken flat out in 6th gear, at about 145 mph. Dieter Braun led ahead of two other riders with Renzo Pasolini, Jarno Saarinen and Hideo Kanaya close behind. Entering the first part of the bend Pasolini’s bike slid from under him and Saarinen could not avoid him and crashed. Kanaya forced his bike to the outside and hit the straw bales in front of the Armco barriers. Twelve of the following riders also crashed and Pasolini and Saarinen died in the ensuing melee. The tragic news reverberated around the motorcycle-racing world and was received tremendous shock. Veteran Pasolini would be sadly missed, particularly by the Italian tifose and young Jarno Saarinen even more so by those from wider afield. His works career had only just begun but already he had a big following all over the world as is shown by several websites devoted to keeping his name and memory alive today. It is probable that his sad demise changed the future of motorcycle racing and that of Yamaha in particular. He was in a good position to take the 500cc-world title in 1973 and development of the straight four Yamaha would have continued and a run of premier titles was on the cards, such that it would have been very unlikely that Kenny Roberts would have come over to Europe. The 1982 OW61 V4 was designed to suite Roberts' riding style and this set the pattern for the 500cc class until the rules were changed to throw the two-strokes out of GPs in 2002. Would the same course of development have been followed if Saarinen had been Yamaha’s number one rider during the second half of the 70s? Yamaha were deeply shocked at the death of Jarno Saarinen, it was the first time that one of their riders had been killed. All the top brass were in Italy to meet the Yamaha outboard motor importer and they visited Monza for a day out to watch Saarinen add to his list of victories on their bikes. The team manager was devastated and spent the next three nights talking to Japan for hours at a time. They published the results of an investigation by German photographer and journalist Volker Rauch in a free booklet entitled “Document of an Accident”. The interviews with riders quoted in the document will be constantly referred to in this article. As a mark of respect, Yamaha pulled out of the GPs and did no development work on the 500cc straight four and it was virtually unchanged when Agostini tried it in the close season after signing to ride for them in 1974. A Board of Inquiry was set up by the authorities but their full report did not come into the public domain for another 20 years and then only in Italy and did not become known in Europe until a chance encounter in 2001! When Renzo Pasolini’s bike slid from under him at the first corner after the start of the 250 race, the aftermath resulted in a number of victims. The main victims were obviously Pasolini and Jarno Saarinen, who were both tragically killed. Next in line were the relatives of the riders, like Renzo’s family and Jarno’s young wife, Soili, who was looking forward to settling down and raising a family with her childhood sweetheart. Then there were the teams and in particular the mechanics who had prepared the bikes involved in the crash. Often they became very close to their rider and a loss was like losing a member of the family and quite naturally they would wonder if their preparation was at fault. Other riders involved in the crash became victims, such as Walter Villa, who lost consciousness for several hours and suffered severe shock and could not speak for three days. But more than that, he was a victim because he was blamed for the accident as a result of his actions in the preceding 350cc race. What has not been apparent until 2001, however, is that truth also became a victim. Even after 30 years, emotions are still raw, particularly for the people closest like Soili and I am reluctant to reopen these sore wounds but I feel that the truth has to be told and revealed to the motor cycle racing world at large. Now first impressions often become lasting impressions and modern day Public Relations personnel realize how important this is and, cynically in my view, have it down to a fine art. They know that if you can refute a story or accusation right at the beginning, it does not matter whether what you put out is true or not, this is what the majority of people will remember. It is similar too when newspapers have to retract a story or make an apology. It is always just a line or two in small print, buried away in the bowls of the paper where very few people will see it and the original report is what remains in the minds of the majority of people. The blame for the fatal crash was laid at three possible causes. 1. The Monza Track 2. Oil Deposited on the Track by Water Villa's Benelli in the Preceding 350cc Race. 3. Seizure of one or more of the Leading Bikes. 1. The Monza Track. One thinks of the Monza circuit as a wide, open track but in the reports of the tragedy, the Curva Grande was said to be rather narrow, being only 9 metres wide. This is not particularly narrow since Donnington in the UK, a modern track, is only 10 metres wide but, compared with the wide start and finish straight at Monza, the track through the Curva Grande may have appeared to have been so. Armco barriers had been erected for car racing after a car had left the track and killed a number of spectators and hedges had been planted to protect the racers but they were put behind the Armco barriers! Just prior to the 1973 Italian GP, the surface had been patched up in the Curva Grande and it was not level, there was a difference of several centimetres. Jarno Saarinen was unhappy about the Armco barriers, which in the event of a crash could throw the rider and his machine back into the path of the on-coming riders. He was also concerned about the unevenness in the levels of the track in the Curva Grande and that a different material had been used to the original surface. He approached the officials and protested quite vehemently but they just shrugged their shoulders and said it was too late to do anything about it. This was a common tactic used by race officials in the days of the Continental Circus. They knew that the riders had to race to pay the bills and would not boycott the meeting. The tag Continental Circus, by which the group of riders that contested the GPs were known, was an apt one even though it was originally intended in a romantic sense. They were like a circus travelling the continent setting up their tents at each place, performing and then packing up and travelling on to the next stop, only to do it all again. It was appropriate in another more basic way, they were like performing animals, exploited by the organizers, paid peanuts, just enough to keep body and soul together, in the knowledge that if they did not perform, if they did not race, they would not be able to eat. With Armco barriers surrounding the Monza track it was obviously not a safe place to race and if you came off and hit one of the barriers you stood the risk of being seriously injured. But Monza was not alone, the Continental Circus raced at the Armco lined Salzburgring and numerous road circuits like the IOM, Brno, Sachsenring, Nurburgring and Dunrod etc where the track was lined by even more dangerous kerbs and walls. The riders knew about the risks and presumably raced accordingly. The tracks needed to be improved and over the following years this happened, the road circuits disappeared and run off areas and chicanes were added to the tracks like Monza but can this circuit be held primarily responsible for the fatalities of May 1973? As the Curva Grande was a bend rather than a corner, the angle of lean would not have been very great. Any bikes that crashed would hit the Armco at a fairly shallow angle and come off at shallow angle and would tend to run parallel to the barrier, rather than bounce back across the track at right angles. As it was the first corner after the start, the riders were in a very tight bunch and even if there had been no Armco barrier, it is highly likely that the following bikes would have hit the riders who had crashed at the head of the pack. Hideo Kanaya said that he forced his bike to the outside and hit the straw bales lining the Armco. The inference was that he was trying to avoid the fallen riders and felt he stood a better chance of surviving if he hit the straw-baled barrier rather than ending up in the melee of crashing bikes and that the latter were not going towards the Armco head-on.