In this new series of articles, of which we do not yet know the exact number, we will try to retrace what led to the creation of the IRTA (International Racing Team Association), one of the four entities which today manage today MotoGP with Dorna Sports, the FIM and the MSMA.
Find here the first part concerning Kenny Roberts, Barry Sheene and the World Series project
Find here the second part concerning the period from the World Series to the drivers' strike at the French Grand Prix
Find here the third part concerning the drivers' strike at the French Grand Prix
As has been said, if the drivers' strike at the 1982 French Grand Prix made the headlines in the specialist press by bringing to light all the points of friction which opposed the drivers to the organizers and the FIM at the time, it did not have immediate consequences, the FIM then seemed more preoccupied by the emerging problem of television rights and did not even address the subject during its autumn congress from October 20 to 25 in Opatija.
However, the following year, in 1983, security issues are moving slowly but they are moving forward nonetheless.
The status of pilot representative is better defined and it is still for the moment Franco Uncini, even if
Mike Trimby remains the one who writes the reports, especially since the Italian, reigning world champion, is the victim of a very serious accident with the young Wayne Gardner who is competing in his first Grand Prix at Assen (see the excellent documentary on Canal+ on this subject).
Furthermore, the principle of circuit approval is validated for three years and the development of a permanent file for each circuit has been confirmed, while the medical commission informs that a mobile clinic is being created, proposed by the Italian federation at the instigation of Dr Costa.
1984 appears to be on the same trend regarding the various security and other problems encountered by pilots. The FIM has a new president, sir Nicholas Schmit, but at the start of the season he was confronted with the problem of OPIT, a company specializing in public relations and advertising based in Milan, supposed to take care of TV rights but which did nothing, to the point that a lawyer was hired to terminate the contract without incurring damages.
Apart from the accident which cost the life of the British pilot Kevin Wrettom (Suzuki) during testing for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, the Grand Prix season passed without much drama and the FIM held its annual congress in Munich from October 21 to 27.
Martin Wimmer y represents the speed drivers since Franco Uncini is absent. A survey was carried out among the riders during the Grand Prix in Assen. Of the 200 drivers questioned, 60 responded and almost all are against private testing but in favor of free testing (one day rather than two) and in favor of a standing start (37 votes against 23) for safety reasons. . The new Nürburgring track was homologated from 1984 and that of Suzuka, Japan, from 1985, with a Japanese Grand Prix scheduled to take place there from 1987.
Like many federations or even clubs, the ARMCO (Association of Racing Motorcycle Manufacturers) asks to be recognized by the FIM, that is to say to be an associate member. Not really knowing if it was an association of competitors and/or teams, the decision was postponed until the following year.
Bernard Fau, who has since converted to cinema, experienced the Continental Circus era and the pre-IRTA period, as a private pilot.
He tells us : “fortunately there were private players, otherwise there would have been no champions. For there to be champions, they have to beat other drivers and these stooges were also very good, even if there were several private statuses behind the factory drivers: the factory drivers. importer, which today roughly correspond to the satellite teams, and the private individuals of which I was a part. You find your contracts, you hire your mechanic and you pay full price for your motorcycles! In 500c, I was perhaps the only one who started without any support, apart from that of my sponsors GPA, Motul and Solamor. I didn't even know Mr. Bonnet who was the Suzuki importer, the bike that in 79 allowed you to win a Grand Prix, and he didn't know me either because he didn't care about racing. I didn't have a segment provided! So starting a season in 500 with only the means to pay for the bike, but zero in the bank account, you had to be a little crazy (laughs)! »
“Then the trouble starts because you’re not on the fucking Grading List. This one, you were in it or you were not in it, and that determined everything. If you weren't there, when you sent your letter to the organizer of the Grand Prix, he replied that you were not on the Grading List, and you told him that to be there, he had to allows you to run. »
“In this regard, it is to the credit of François Chevalier (director of the Paul Ricard circuit) who admitted all the international drivers in 1975. There were therefore three practice sessions and 120 guys for 40 places and the Top drivers were starting to accept that they had to qualify, whereas before they were automatically qualified. It is for example thanks to this that Johnny Cecotto, unknown entry in the French Grand Prix in 75, won in 250 and 350 on Sunday evening. Or Pierre Bolle, Jacques' brother, who came out of the Honda Cup and who entered Paul Ricard in 1976 and made a first row there. These are things that are unimaginable today! »
“But not everyone was François Chevalier and didn't have this approach: the others didn't want to bother with so many people, even if there were always more drivers in practice than qualified. »
“But this Grading List was horrible. Even after having achieved results and scoring lots of points, when I went down to 250 in 1983, I was not on the 250 Grading List, and although I had finished 10th at Hockenheim and scored a point, at Monza I was not engaged. And I wasn't the only one! And at that time, the French federation was not helping us much, while the Italians and the English had their representatives who were fighting with the organizer to obtain commitments. We were all alone. »
1985 takes place a bit like 1984: the most dangerous circuits no longer appear on the calendar and we do not deplore too many dramas within the framework of the World Championship.
The life of the pilots was not, however, rosy, as detailed to us today Jean-Marc Bonnay, alias Snoopy, who then served as coordinator under the orders of Jacky Germain within the Sonauto–Gauloises team which lined up Christian Sarron in 500cc:
– “Safety: that first meant stopping driving on dangerous circuits like Opatija, Salzburg, Nürburgring, Brno, Imatra, Monza, etc. As always, we had to leave comrades on the way (Billie Nelson, etc.) before things changed. And once some of the most dangerous ones had been removed, it was necessary to improve those that remained. Questionnaires were given to certain drivers and they were very surprised by the information we gave them because it is true that a driver drives and does not look at where the wall is… But some were kept for their image like Suzuka for the endurance when the Grands Prix were no longer there. This also meant taking care of the means of intervention, the Race Directors (Salzburg, Nogaro), etc. »
– « Le calendrier : il était fait n’importe comment. On pouvait avoir Salzbourg en début de saison avec de la neige, du froid et du brouillard au Nürburgring, rouler en Tchécoslovaquie le dimanche puis retraverser le “rideau de fer” et ses longueurs douanières pour rouler en essais le vendredi à Silverstone. Là encore, des camarades sont restés sur la route : Bernard Fargues, Skip Aksland, etc. »
- " Commitments: this meant writing to all the organizers at the very beginning of the year, hoping for a favorable response. Often without a response, private pilots without any great track record would still knock on the organizers' doors to try to get their ticket. Often they did not succeed and left without riding for the next race. Sometimes, we only accepted them on Friday evening depending on the falls of the day. Suffice to say that to qualify on Saturday alone, it was almost mission impossible! This only resulted in expenses (fuel, parts, tires) while they were already pulling the devil by the tail! However, we must not forget the essential role played by the national delegates and, as such, Paul Sperat-Czar and Benjamin Savoye have done a lot for the French. »
- " Finish bonuses: in Grand Prix, there were no starting bonuses unlike international races which had good fields since there were both, starting bonuses for some, and finishing bonuses depending on the results. For both, pay was on Sunday evening and, again, it was long and complicated: hours, one by one in line waiting for our turn! Once you arrived at the pay office, you had to accept all the local tax reasons that reduced the pilots' income. For me in 1988, taking the bonuses of 3 drivers in cash was far from pleasant..."
- " Passes: how many hours did some of us, attached to this task, have to stand still at the circuit secretariat to obtain enough passes for their team? It was the Prince's right! Some were really tough in this regard, Salzburg in the lead. »
Jacques Bussillet, already at the time a journalist very close to the pilots before taking over the editorial office of Moto Journal, summarizes the situation for us: “It's difficult to explain today, but from the top to the bottom of the club ladder, the organizers and the federation, everyone was obsessed with the idea that the runners were doing this purely out of sportsmanship, and therefore he could not be professional and could not be paid. There was a dichotomy between people from an old sporting and federal school who thought that sport should remain sport, and that money should only pay for the pilot to allow him to come and achieve his sporting feat. They did not accept the idea that an athlete gets paid for his sporting activity! It was almost the old Olympic vision dating back a century and none of them took into account or understood in real time that suddenly the cost of the race was not the same, with the arrival of two-strokes. For private riders, we had gone from a period of gentleman riders, who did it for the pleasure and beauty of the sport, to people who also wanted to make a living from it. »
“The second phase is when sponsors arrive in Grand Prix from 1971. The drivers then organize themselves into stables and teams but this professionalization is not followed at the organizational level, and when you arrive on a circuit, you wait two, three or four hours in line at the door of a club or a vague caravan to obtain, by fighting, three passes for your car and your mechanic. It was amateur in every way. »
“At the end of 78, Kenny Roberts arrived and made the Europeans understand in his own way that they were all idiots for accepting this messy side. It takes a kick in there and it gets everyone moving. But it takes time, with the strikes at Spa in 79 then at Nogaro in 82, interspersed with the history of the World Series. In one fell swoop, he scares the hell out of the organizers, and beyond the revaluation of prices, he breaks this old custom which consists of saying that the drivers are guys who race for sport and that there is no There's no reason for them to make money. And little by little, the authorities are beginning to accept the idea that not only must pilots be better paid, but also that they are professionals, especially since the massive arrival of the big tobacco companies, Marlboro in the lead under the The impetus of Léo de Graffenried, the son of one of the rare Swiss F1 drivers, “Toulo”, gave another dimension to the motorcycle Grands Prix: the latter did not want to spend money on barefoot people! »
“The IRTA will be born logically from all this, thanks to people like Serge Rosset (who races the ELF 500cc with Ron Haslam), Snoopy (see above and below), Michel Métraux (among other ELF representatives in Switzerland and team manager of the Parisienne with Pierre Bolle in 250cc), then the English who quickly sniff out that there is power to be taken. »
Ago in deep discussion with Snoopy (middle) and Jacky Germain (right)…
To fully understand the rapid evolution of Grands Prix over the previous two decades, here are the workshop trucks and the hospitality of the Yamaha factory in 1964…
To illustrate, if it was still necessary, the non-recognition of drivers' rights at that time, it was in May 1986 during the Grand Prix des Nations at Monza that Jean-Louis Tournadre, 250cc world champion in 1982, had made his return to the Grand Prix, after a long begging and a lot of effort to be allowed to participate in the tests!
Without this being absolutely linked, it was also the same weekend that the IRTA was born during the Grand Prix des Nations, following a meeting bringing together the main team managers and top international drivers at the instigation of Jean-Marc Bonnay aka Snoopy: “As soon as the movement was launched, two people clearly positioned themselves to make themselves available to the group and its objectives, to put all these ideas into perspective, to define the goals and to write the statutes of an association which would aim to “defend the interests of drivers, teams and their sponsors. » These two people were Michel Métraux, boss of Team La Parisienne Elf, and Serge Rosset, boss of the ROC Elf team. The two were complementary, Michel the pragmatic, administrative, legal and calm Swiss businessman, Serge the man of new ideas, the bulldozer that no fight could frighten. And others, including me, around them to “push the wagons.” »
“We had to find a name for this association, and IRTA appeared, or “International Road Racing Teams Association”.
“If things progressed quite quickly, it became essential for Michel Métraux “the wise” to get the FIM to officially recognize us as an “Associate Member” in order to be representative of all those involved. Not everyone was necessarily enthusiastic about the idea of working with the FIM, which had not shown much willingness to be open, but it won the support of the group. Unfortunately, in our approach we were going to trample on the flowerbeds of a few including two people who were trying to set up a builders' association: Chas Mortimer and Paul Butler. They spared no effort to push us aside and some maneuvers were limited, but in the end it was us who won and the IRTA was officially recognized by the FIM. This was the 1st stage of its official development. »
Écurie Parisienne by Michel Métraux, Swiss as its name does not indicate…
The official recognition of IRTA by the FIM took place at the end of 86, during the annual congress of the governing body which took place in Palermo, with however a request for modification of its statutes which were not in conformity with the FIM because they allowed the association to mark a possible disagreement with a decision of the federation. The FIM board of directors also demanded that a member of the FIM be authorized to attend the sessions of the IRTA general assembly.
A recognition conditional on allegiance, therefore, but nevertheless a rather tumultuous story and very far from being over, just like our series of articles...
To be continued…
Find here the first part concerning Kenny Roberts, Barry Sheene and the World Series project
Find here the second part concerning the period from the World Series to the drivers' strike at the French Grand Prix
Find here the third part concerning the drivers' strike at the French Grand Prix
Crédit photos : FIM, Jumping Jack, Yamaha Motor, Mike “Michelle” Duff, etc.
