Either the Monza race officials absolutely love or hate Max Biaggi and his Aprilia. The Roman Emperor was dominating the race and was then penalized with a ride-through in race 2 for cutting the first turn, as was Noriyuki Haga given the same penalty in race 1.

This isn’t the first time that Biaggi has received such a punishment that ‘robbed’ him of a WSBK podium. Back in 2009 always at Monza, the Italian received a 20 second penalty for cutting the Roggia chicane and was bumped back to 11th place that automatically gave Ryuichi Kiyonari the third spot on the podium. That time Aprilia and Biaggi appealed to the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) but lost any chance of taking back the podium and points when the court ruled they didn’t make the deadline appeal date and then had to pay the legal costs.

This time it looks like Aprilia will take the decision more or less laying down and any chances of appealing against the race officials call, judging by the words of Gigi Dall’Igna, Aprilia technical and sports director is not being contemplated, at least for the moment, “The judging officials are there to take decisions. It’s our job to respect them and so we must accept the penalty which the judges enforced. However, we cannot keep quiet about the fact that, from a strictly sporting point of view, Max drew no time advantage from cutting the turn. A problem which forced Max to avoid crashing and return to the track at 330 km/h: a very difficult condition also in trying to avoid a stripe painted on the track. Our disappointment is made even more bitter in consideration of the work that the entire team did in order to perform as best as possible for this round. Now we’ll continue to work hard as we have always done, in order to keep this championship open until the end”.

This is what Biaggi had to say, “At the moment I am feeling only great disappointment, for me and for the entire team. We prepared to the best of our ability and I think we showed that on the track. I have to accept this severe decision, blaming myself for not having been shrewd enough not to have touched that line. Now we have to regroup and focus on the next races. There is still a long season ahead”.

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