The farcical decision to hand Franco Morbidelli yet another featherweight sanction after the Catalan Grand Prix sprint has exposed – yet again – just how toothless MotoGP’s penalty regime really is.
Both Morbidelli and Gresini rookie Fermin Aldeguer – already guilty earlier this year of taking rivals out – smashed into opponents during Saturday’s sprint. Within the space of seconds, Aprilia’s Jorge Martin and Marco Bezzecchi were both on the ground. Yet the “punishment” from the FIM stewards? A token long lap penalty each for Sunday.
For Morbidelli, this is now a grim pattern. He wiped out Maverick Vinales at Mugello in June. Aldeguer torpedoed Miguel Oliveira back in Argentina, ending the Portuguese rider’s season and, indirectly, his premier-class career. By Barcelona, both men were repeat offenders. Logic demanded escalation. Instead, we got the same soft touch.
Why? Because MotoGP’s system is built to fail. Incidents are judged in isolation, as if prior behaviour doesn’t exist. Mitigating circumstances are valued above all. Saturday’s crashes were written off as “ordinary overtaking mistakes,” not the wild lunges of Mugello. Both riders fell themselves, so apparently that makes it less serious.
Worse still, different types of offences are filed away in separate boxes. Morbidelli’s grid drops earlier this year for crawling on the racing line at Buriram and Silverstone? Completely irrelevant. His double long lap penalty at Silverstone in 2024 for wiping out Bezzecchi on lap one? Wiped clean by the calendar. Every year, repeat offenders start with a “clean slate.”
The result: a rider like Morbidelli can crash into rivals again and again, yet never face the kind of escalating sanctions that would actually deter dangerous behaviour. He’s already racked up four penalties in 2025 alone – but still no sign of a suspension.
The contrast with Moto2 and Moto3 is staggering. Stewards in the junior classes have no hesitation to escalate: five Moto2 riders, including reigning Moto3 champion David Alonso, were hammered with nine-place grid drops for repeat offences of slow riding during qualifying. If the same standards applied in MotoGP, Morbidelli would already be sidelined.
There is an obvious fix, and everyone knows it: bring back the penalty points system that was scrapped after the infamous Rossi–Marquez Sepang clash of 2015. Had it still existed, Morbidelli would be staring at a race ban by now. And bans, history shows, get riders’ attention.
Yes, reviving that system would mean politics, egos, and resistance from the paddock. But there’s an easier step the stewards – led by Simon Crafar – could implement immediately: stop compartmentalising offences. Stop pretending only identical infractions matter. Start treating any repeat violation as an aggravating factor.
If Saturday’s crash had been judged as Morbidelli’s fourth breach of the year – which, in reality, it was – a harsher sanction was absolutely available. Instead, he skates away again, emboldened by a structure that protects repeat offenders rather than punishes them.
MotoGP’s credibility is on the line. Until the sport grows the guts to hand down penalties that actually mean something, dangerous riding will continue unchecked. And fans will keep asking the same question: how many more crashes before the stewards finally wake up?
