The show, as the old saying reminds us, must go on.

The question after last Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix was simple: should it have?

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The 20th round of the 2025 MotoGP season in Malaysia was won by Ducati’s Alex Marquez, the younger brother of world champion Marc Marquez sealing second place for the season to mark the first time siblings had annexed the top two spots in the premier class.

But after the race, the MotoGP riders weren’t keen on talking about themselves.

Hours earlier, ahead of the world championship entry-level Moto3 series race, Spanish rider and 2025 Moto3 champion Jose Antonio Rueda and Swiss rival Noah Dettwiler had come together in sickening crash as the riders circulated on the sighting lap to the grid, Dettwiler’s bike crawling down the left side of the circuit at walking pace after an apparent technical malfunction, Rueda – unsighted – smashing into the back of him at full speed.

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It was a brutal reminder that, as one MotoGP paddock insider put it, the sport can be “mean and vicious”. The Moto3 race was, correctly, postponed while medical teams attended to both riders, the delay to the schedule of three Grands Prix at Sepang pushing two hours.

What happened next was what got most of the MotoGP riders, awaiting their own races, so riled up.

A medical helicopter left the circuit to take Rueda, 19, and 20-year-old Dettwiler to a downtown Kuala Lumpur hospital, air travel necessary to save time and to overcome significant road closures between the airport – where Sepang is located – and the city for the arrival of US president Donald Trump to the ASEAN summit being held in the Malaysian capital.

And then, nothing.

Moto3 riders – the majority of whom are still in their teens – were sent out for a truncated 10-lap race with no news about their colleagues. Scant medical updates finally came through after the MotoGP race hours later.

PIT TALK PODCAST: Aprilia Racing CEO Massimo Rivola joins Pit Talk to review a successful yet tumultuous year in MotoGP, look at the growth of Marco Bezzecchi and his hopes for Jorge Martin, and discuss Liberty Media’s arrival while reminiscing about his F1 days working for Australian Paul Stoddart. Listen to Pit Talk below.

Rueda, per the world championship’s official social media accounts five hours after the incident, was declared “awake and alert, with a suspected hand fracture and a number of contusions.”

Dettwiler’s team – as social media speculation ran rampant – issued a statement that read, in part: “Our rider Noah Dettwiler … was taken to the hospital in Kuala Lumpur and will need to undergo multiple surgeries … he is in good hands, and we kindly ask you to respect his privacy, we will not be sharing any further details at this time. Noah is a true fighter.”

For two-time MotoGP world champion Francesco Bagnaia, it was too much.

“For me, to let such young riders do a 10-lap race in those conditions after seeing helicopters take off with two of them, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’ll never understand it,” Bagnaia said.

“Luckily I’m not the one who needs to take these kind of decisions. I think things are done in a way that I would not do.”

Rueda, 19, won the 10th race of his Moto3 title-winning season in Australia a week before Sunday’s horror crash in Malaysia. (Photo by Paul Crock / AFP)Source: AFP

‘WE DESERVE TO KNOW’: RIDERS CRITICAL OVER LACK OF INFORMATION

Motorsport is dangerous. Any ticket you buy to a motorsport event, any pass you receive, any waiver you sign, reminds you of that inescapable fact.

MotoGP riders, almost all of whom have come through Moto3 and then Moto2 to make it to the top class, know that more than most. Many have lost friends and colleagues on that journey.

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Since the turn of the century, five riders have lost their lives from accidents on Grand Prix weekends: rising Japanese MotoGP star Daijiro Kato at Suzuka in 2003, Kato’s compatriot Shoya Tomizawa in Moto2 at Misano in 2010, Spanish Moto2 rider Luis Salom in Barcelona in 2016, and Swiss Moto3 rider Jason Dupasquier at Mugello four years ago.

And, more pertinently in Malaysia, MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli, a Valentino Rossi protégé who was killed on the opening lap of the 2011 MotoGP race at the same Sepang circuit used last weekend, the 14-year anniversary of his death coming on the Thursday before last weekend’s track action commenced.

The riders know and accept the risk, but that doesn’t stop them taking accidents such as Sunday’s Rueda/Dettwiler crash hard. But while the accident itself was brutal, the lack of information about their colleagues while they were getting ready to race and risk themselves didn’t sit well.

Swiss rider Dettwiler, 20, is in his second Moto3 campaign this season for the CIP Green Power team, riding a KTM. (Photo by Mirco Lazzari gp/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images

Speaking after the race, Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi – a close friend of Bagnaia’s – spoke for the majority of his peers.

“It has been super tough because we don’t have clear information,” the Italian said.

“It’s not the best, because I think that we deserve to know at least what’s happening. The only thing I know is that I think they are quite stable, but I don’t know anything more.

“It was not the best day starting like this, seeing such a bad accident, but also not knowing anything about this. Seeing two helicopters go away and no news or anything, it was not the best. But we deserve to know what’s happening, because we are also riders.

“We have to go there and fight with the bikes and try to make the best performance that we can, but at least we have to have a clear mind.”

Asked how difficult it was to get into race mode after watching the crash, Ducati rider Franco Morbidelli admitted “I think I didn’t manage to” after riding to fourth place in the MotoGP race.

Australia’s Jack Miller, who finished 14th for Yamaha, said the very nature of the job required a level of temporary amnesia as to what had happened beforehand.

“No-one wants to see something like that ever happen, but riding one of these bikes takes all the mental capacity that you can hold,” Miller explained.

“Once you strap the helmet on and get ready to go, most of the other problems kind of go to the back [of your mind], you’re trying to stay on the bike, manage the tyres … that comes to the forefront.”

Speaking on The Oxley Bom MotoGP Podcast, revered MotoGP journalist and author – and Isle of Man TT race-winner – Mat Oxley said Sunday’s accident was a reminder of the dangers the riders face, and explained why riders in the championship’s biggest category were so anguished by the response to it.

“Motorbikes isn’t a warm, fuzzy, lovely, sweet sport of riders riding around on bikes in glamorous leathers, with brolly girls standing next to them on the grid,” Oxley said.

“It’s a mean, vicious sport, and anything can happen at any time. What happened [in Malaysia] … literally two, three-tenths of a second of inattention by a rider, and here we are.”