Marco Simoncelli Tribute
The tributes will be endless for Marco Simoncelli this weekend at Valencia. But one man known throughout the motorcycle industry for his heavily-appraised Isle of Man TT novel "Riding Man" wants to make these tributes endless on a much larger scale - worldwide.
The moto-journalist Mark Gardiner is asking that motorcyclists around the world match what will be conducted at Valencia MotoGP Sunday - revving motorcycles for 58 seconds in honor of Marco Simoncelli's number.
The idea throttled into Gardiner's head after he read that Marco's dad, Paola, would rather have a minute of MotoGP bikes revving than a minute of silence. Paola said that would be more of a tribute to his 24-year-old son who perished in a second-lap crash at Sepang Oct. 23.
Following is Gardiner's request to Ultimate MotorCycling in his own words...
Mark Gardiner says: "A couple of days ago, after I read Paolo Simoncelli (Marco's dad) comment that Marco would rather have a minute of all the MotoGP bikes at Valencia revving their motors than a minute of silence, something occurred to me...
"What if we all did that, all around the world? Something a little less than a minute of silence; say, 58 seconds. And something a lot more (noisy).
"At first, I thought we should all do it at exactly the same time, but the more I thought about it, I realized that 10:30 a.m. in Valencia is the crack of dawn on the west coast of the U.S., and late at night in Japan. And, I liked the idea of people doing it at 10:30 in their own time zone, creating a 'wave' that would begin about 12 hours before the Valencia rev-up, way out in the western Pacific, and end about 12 hours later in Hawaii. We'd literally wave good-bye.
"I wrote a blog post to that effect, and it generated a few hundred extra hits that first day. Then, in the next 24 hours, it generated thousands of hits. Someone coined a hashmark, #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday, on Twitter.
"I created a Facebook group with the same name. Now, the question is, can we create a global event in the 3 days (roughly) we have before the official Valencia memorial?
"Wouldn't it be great if, all around the world, motorcyclists stopped what they were doing at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, and revved up their bikes? If they make a video of it, or just want to comment about it, they can do so on the #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday Facebook group.
"Please help to make it happen...for more information, people can check my blog or search #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday on Facebook or Twitter.
"I have this idea that Marco - who had often been a divisive figure in racing, although he was widely popular among fans - could be a unifying figure in the wider community of motorcyclists."
The final sentence concludes his piece well, and we at Ultimate Motorcycling agree with that sentiment.
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