Initiated during the first Grand Prix of the MotoGP season in Portugal, what we can call “The Marc Márquez affair” has just become known a seemingly surprising conclusion for the enthusiasts that we all are.
But there is a world between passion and the law, and that is why between notification of sanction, application of sanction and decision concerning the appeal made by Marc Márquez and the HRC – REPSOL HONDA TEAM, we asked Maître Jérôme Henry, Lawyer at the Court of Paris who knows the MotoGP world like the back of his hand, to give us his professional opinion.
Opinion on the Marquez case, continued
By Maître Jérôme Henry, Lawyer at the Court of Paris
The MotoGP Court of Appeal handed down its decision on May 9, 2023, and many of the comments published in the media are, once again, completely incorrect.
1. To begin, the decision does not arrive out of time because article 3.4.4. of the FIM MotoGP Regulations provides that the decision must be made within four weeks from the filing of the appellant's appeal brief.
In this case, the brief was filed on April 17 so the Court had until May 16 to rule.
2. On the background, we wrote two things in our previous analysis :
“It is therefore very likely that the judges of the Court of Appeal will either grant the stay of execution initially, or make their decision quickly enough to not have to rule on the request for a stay.”
“Therefore, in my opinion, the MotoGP Court of Appeal cannot do otherwise than to invalidate the decision of March 28, 2023”
This is exactly what happened, and for the reasons I mentioned.
a) The Court first issued a stay of execution, to allow Marc Márquez, if necessary, to take part in the following GP(s) without carrying out this “long double lap” while awaiting a decision from the Court on the merits of the dispute,
b) Then on May 9 she made her decision without waiting for the four-week deadline to expire, undoubtedly so that it would take place before the French GP, where Marc Márquez must make his comeback.
The motivation of the Court of Appeal for annulling this second decision is mainly that no provision of the FIM MotoGP regulations authorizes the Stewards to modify a disciplinary decision, unless its wording was ambiguous or imprecise, which was not the case. case.
The Court of Appeal expresses its sympathy for the Stewards' motivation, namely that the driver suffers a sanction during a real race, which is not the case in their eyes if the driver is prevented from taking part in the race, but they enforce the law and they annul the decision of March 28.
Accepting a second decision for the same facts without there being a need for interpretation is unacceptable, especially in a context where it seems that the question was expressly asked by the driver and/or his team to the marshals, who would have responded verbally that, if Márquez did not start in Argentina, the sanction would be considered served.
Did the Commissioners understand that Márquez might not come to Argentina at all?
I'm not sure: it's possible that they understood that the question asked concerned the case where Marquez, due to injury for example, could not start the race.
Either way, it seems they have responded to Márquez and Honda in a clear manner.
3. Note three more interesting things :
– The Court notes that the appeal of Marc Márquez and Honda was out of time in reality, the decision of the “FIM Sporting Manager” to give them 24 hours not being in compliance with the regulations (which provide for a one hour deadline). But taking into account the circumstances, the Court, while noting that it was not up to this FIM Sporting Manager to grant such a delay, especially since he gave no reason for doing so, decided not to mention itself this plea of inadmissibility, which the FIM did not raise either. It is true that if the FIM had requested and/or obtained the maintenance of the decision of March 28 because of an appeal deadline not respected even though it took 24 hours because the FIM representative had told it to allowed, it would have caused even more scandal.
– The Court orders the FIM to assume the administrative costs of the appeal procedure, and reimburses Honda the €1.320 deposit, but the latter, who requested that the FIM cover their legal costs, were rejected. The Court thus wanted to emphasize that certainly, the Stewards had made an error which justified their decision of March 28 to be annulled, but that Márquez was doing well.
– Finally, the Court notes that the FIM communicated on March 30 an undated document in which it specified that the philosophy of the Stewards is that a sanctioned driver actually serves his sentence, so that in the event of a sanction it must be applied during the next race in which the driver concerned will participate, except in the event of an injury occurring after and unrelated to the incident which earned him the sanction, but it excludes the application of this document of which the FIM does not establish that it was brought to the attention of Marc Márquez and Honda before the two sanctions of March 26 and 28, 2023.
In conclusion, I find this decision perfectly justified and reasoned and I do not see any collusion between the authorities and Honda, as some conspiracy maniacs point out.
Jerome Henry
Attorneys
