"Hey this has Methyl Bubba-All in it, what do you want me to do with it now?"
Meeting Summary from Atlanta:
AMA Pro's Steve Whitelock held a meeting with media at Atlanta to explain their recent press release about Hill and Wey's fuel, the oxygen, and what really happened and why they returned the points and purse.
In a nutshell, if you read Weekend Window, you know already so we won't beat it to death!
Whitelock used his meeting to explain step by step how he got from the AMA rulebook to a standard specification for testing fuel, and how that specification has just 13 approved oxygenates. As it turned out, the fuel that was in Hill and Wey's bike was good on oxygen, and the discrepancies in testing led them to discover the error happened indirectly because of the fuel's oxygenate, whish isn't approved. Doh!
That means everyone with that stuff in their fuel is illegal too, and that means just about everyone!
Now what?
The way out - give everyone till April 15th to formulate fuel to the letter of the specification. VP may or may not have a headache on their hands, and a lot of inventory, not anyone else's issue anyway.
A transcript of the meeting will be out later, but the best summary was at the end that Whitelock gave TV (It's talking in soundbites, but it works.)
Quick "Grocery List" Rundown of the facts, from Steve Whitelock to TV:
"We tested the fuel.
We found that in our opinion it was out of spec.
When we did more investigation, we found that it had an illegal substance.
When you take that illegal substance and know what the oxygen mass fraction is and do the math, it comes out that the oxygen in the fuel was correct at 3.6%.
But, at the same time, we have an illegal substance in the fuel.
So now, we have to have everyone formulate their fuel for after April 15th so that they don't use that illegal substance in their fuel, that they use only one of the 13 items as specified in the (ASTM) D4814.
It wasn't the rider's fault. It wasn't the team's fault. It was the fuel manufacturer's fault. Almost every manufacturer in our paddock uses this chemical. Therefore we are going to give them until April 15th to get it out. No penalties.
Every time we test fuel now, we are going to identify every substance in the fuel."
A few points:
So where does all that "dash 1" and whatever else fuel go that contains the offending oxygenate that no one knew about until now? Burn it by April 15 or pour it in your car or something.
Teams are going to need to get used to whatever replaces this fuel by then too.
The meeting wasn't about the fuel found in the BBMX bike of Jason Thomas. That one was a simple bad mix from the supplier that most teams don't test for. (Should you really need to be a chemist to race? kind of thing.) JT$ still loses points and purse, and VP will re-emburse purse as a courtesy. So BBMX and JT$ lose 6 points and live through a big headache.
Whitelock took issue with some of the earlier points on Weekend Window that were blogged as this was unfolding. Specifically the speculation that the chemical makeup of these fuels can change under racing conditions, and that may explain a change in test results due to nothing more than riding your bike. As WW dug around on this, some teams said they have seen it and some said they didn't. In any event, it's not what was going on this time. Fair enough. Blogs are stories in the making and sometimes they are criticized for jumping to conclusions - which wasn't the intent. With a blog, tomorrow brings another twist in the story! That's why we love blogs anyway, right?
The 25-point question for the podium guys is what happens if something like this happens again? Has the AMA added a review to these tests, or if things are out of spec, will they get DQ'd? Answer? Whitelock said it's up to the teams to stay in spec, and yes, DQ's are still what happens, not research. This one was unique because the problem had spread to nearly everyone.
Overall, the AMA put this one to bed for now pretty well. There were some blue shirts carefully listening in on our media meeting, and when it was over, Whitelock got an earful from them too.
They closed the door and went at it. That means it's business as usual!
