From Rainey Article; September 5th, 2003
http://www.mcnews.com.au/Q: Would you be involved in some way in resurrecting the US GP?
A: Oh, yeah. I’m working with Laguna, being real close to the circuit because I live just up the road from it, I have had contact with Carmelo (Ezpeleta, head of Dorna, the commercial operator of the MotoGP championship), with Dorna, we’ve had some meetings with them, and he is going to come out and take a look at the facility from what they’ve been doing and what the future plan is. For sure, I’d be involved, yep.
Q: You said you were out at Laguna last Monday in the kart. Safety is increasingly an issue, as it was in your day with various rider meetings, and the riders now have a safety committee - and we may see Suzuka (venue for the Japanese MotoGP) go off the calendar next year because of that. Safety-wise, is Laguna up to scratch or would some things have to be changed for safety from your perspective as a rider?
A: There is one corner that would have to be fixed and we’ve already drawn out a sketch to the corner, but I think every race track in the world, if you make them all safe, then you take all the challenge out of them. If you make every track safe, the public can’t even get close to even watch, they can’t even get close to a corner because you need so much run-off. I raced at Laguna and it was plenty safe when I rode and I can’t imagine the tracks being so much more safer now than it would make Laguna Seca obsolete. As I said about Laguna, all the accidents happened because of rider error nothing to do with the race track nobody hit walls and I think that’s the main concern is just having enough run-off room. Kevin’s accident (Kevin Magee’s in 1990) was kind of a freak accident. Gardner’s, when he crashed, was too much throttle, but the ground is the same hardness no matter which country you are in.
Q: Which is the corner that’s the problem at Laguna that would have to be changed?
A: It would be the corner after the Corkscrew there’s not enough run-off. It’s turn nine. Actually they call it Rainey Corner! I’ve told them in the past this needs to be fixed, and I’ve already fixed it as far as what needs to be done so we would have to change the corner and we would slow it down some. We could take all the challenge out of it just to make it safe, but that corner does need to be addressed, but that would be the only one.
