MX Diary: Italians fined for customs chaos
By Sean Lawless on 21st Apr 16
Pre-qualification practice was reduced to one session in Mexico after nine race bikes and Pirelli tyres were eventually released by Mexican customs in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Riders affected were Evgeny Bobryshev (HRC), Petar Petrov (Kawasaki MX2), Valentin Guillod and Alvin Ostlund (Standing Construct), Benoit Paturel (Kemea), Roberts Justs (HSF), Thomas Covington (Husky MX2), Alessandro Lupino (Assomotor) and Shaun Simpson (Wilvo Virus KTM). The entire supply of Pirelli tyres to be used by half the entry was also held up.
Apparently an aerosol was found by Mexican customs in one of the crates and they immediately confiscated the entire batch.
With a quarter of the entry for the GP potentially without bikes the FIM immediately reacted to halve practice with a noon start as most of the affected bikes needed to be rebuilt after being crated up immediately after racing in Argentina.
Saturday morning the culprit – the Italian Assomotor team – was uncovered and FIM MX boss Tony Skillington confirmed that the maximum fine of 5000 Swiss Francs had been imposed.
The danger to the GP by the action of one irresponsible team was emphasised by David Luongo of Youthstream.
"We must be most grateful to Mexican customs for their co-operation,” he said. "Normally, as in most countries, they close for the weekend at 2pm on Fridays but they re-opened especially for us at 4pm and the crates arrived at the track 5am Saturday.”
