Leon Camier and Eugene Laverty have explained why they were part of the group of riders who opted out of the opening Argentina World Superbike race and how the Riders’ Safety Commission offered an alternative solution as ‘90% of riders did not wan⛦t to race’.

In what is turning out to be an increasingly controversial Argentina round at Circuito San Juan Villicum, six riders sat out the opening Worl🌳d Superbike🎉 race over safety concerns while another 12 riders took part in the race which was won by Alvaro Bautista.

Camier was joined by Eugene Laverty, Chaz Davies, Ryuichi Kiyonari, Marco Melandri and Sandro Cortese in missing the race – while Loris Baz was forced out with injury sustained in qualifying – with the riders who missed the race feeling the circuit ൩was unsafe to race on in dusty and hot conditions.

Chaz Davies revealed to Eurosport the circuit was only 🐟given F༺IM homologation on Wednesday before this weekend despit෴e some questionable issues with track conditions and planned im♒provements.

Davies is a member of the World Superbike Safety Commission along with Cam🍸ier, Laverty, Jonathan Rea and Randy Krummenacher (as World Supersport representative) who are part of the process in assessing safety standa🥂rds in the championship.

Camier says the track’s problems were known “꧙many months before” and despite World Superbike organisers’ best efforts with the riders to resoꦇlve the safety concerns he felt the opening race should not have gone ahead.

“We’ve ridden when the track has been phenomenally filthy and tried to do our thing, clean the track, do the best we can and we have been put in a situation that we should not have been put in,” Camier told Eurosport.

“We have then ridden in the hot conditions and found out just before the race t♑hat the FIM showed us pictures of the circuit with oil coming up through the track, you can pick it out with your hands, the ground is not staying together so ꩲit is not right.

“We’ve also ridden in the hot conditions on Friday when we could not even get our knee down🗹. It is similar to conditions now where there is no control, we have no control over the bike, we’ve all had massive moments this weekend🔜.

“Loris has broken his wrist because of it in the Superpole session and before the race we had 90% of riders said no they do🎀 not ඣwant to race so we’ve all been pretty adamant that this is not safe.

“We can pootle around and do whatever but in a race situation it doesn’t w💟ork like that. What happens if someone does get hurt, then what happens? The point of this whole Safety Commission is to take responsibility, we have pressure from teams, from everyone and we want to go and ride that is why we are here. This is what we do. To put all the pressure on us is just wrong. It is just not safe for us.

“This is not a game, there are people’s lives at stake at the end of the d♑ay and the reality is we sho♛uldn’t have been racing today.”

Laverty has given a blunt view on the situation as he feels race organisers “did s🔯omething very underhand” by getting team managers to pressure their riders into ཧracing, which he felt was the main reason the majority of riders took part in the race.

“They went and did something very underhand, they went to the team managers put pressure on us altogether to try and race. Then we put together us riders, we had 90% of the riders together, a𝓀nd that was sorted before the race,” Laverty༺ said.

𝓡“There are always going to be a few fellas that want to ride. Rinaldi wanted to ride for whatever reason, but we had guys൩ like the world champion Johnny Rea with us, stood there ready to support us. He didn’t want to ride, Alex Lowes didn’t want to ride, so there weren’t many riders that wanted to.

“I’m really disappointed in Johnny Rea, he is our representativ▨e as the world champion, he needed more backbone, he made a very spineless decisio𝔉n to go and race. It’s something I will speak to him about afterwards.”

Camier also feels the alternatives offered fell on deaf ears with World Superbik▨e organisers. The Moriwaki Althea Honda rider explained the idea to run both full distance races on Su💃nday in the cooler conditions forecasted for tomorrow.

“🌳We also pushed for two races tomorrow as tomorrow conditions will be colder and from this morning that conditions🐲 will be a lot better. We know that it is acceptable in cooler conditions,” he said.

“We tried to compromise, we suggested last night, we knew tomorrow was going to be hot and if it is we don’t race and we do two full length races on Sunday when the conditions are 12 degrees cooler,” Laverty added. “T✨hat is still the case, I plan to race tomor🐭row, this little rebellion is only about this race and mostly the organisers have let us down.”

Questions have also been raised about track improvements requested since the World ൲Superbike championships’ first round at the Argentinean track 12 mওonths ago.

“The asphalt le✅vel isn’t homologated to an FIM standard,” Laverty said. “The guys that surfaced the track, they didn’t put the correct mix and that is why it is coming up at a certain temperature. When the conditions were cool I did a lap in the 1min 41s and when it were hot I did a 1m 50s, that’s nine seconds, like wet conditions. The track is not up to standard.”

The current World Superbike schedule for Sunday remains unchanged with the standard warm-up sessions for both the Superbike and Supersport classes before the Superpole Sprint race (13:00 local time), the World Supersport race (14:15 local time)ꦰ and the World Supe🌊rbike Race 2 (16:00 local time).