Copyright 2002, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

From e-mails:

The true measure of a man’s character is not (IMHO) what he says or does every minute of every day, it is what he does when confronted with his own shortcomings and tribulations and must face himself in the mirror. I have to give David credit for being a big enough man to apologize publicly and THEN take the time to articulate his position in a much more amicable demeanor.

As a former radio broadcast professional, I can tell you that it can be extremely distracting to have a producer talking in your headset (or earpiece these days) while trying to give a news broadcast or host a radio show. I can certainly see where David is simply working to sharpen his skills as a broadcaster and I personally find his coverage satisfactory, albeit less polished than MotoGP coverage.

Running track days we’re constantly concerned about making sure we have proper cornerworker coverage to do a good job ensuring our riders’ safety at all points of each racetrack venue. Working as course control we have to deal with monitoring radio traffic from only about 8-15 people. I can’t imagine having to try to coordinate the massive crush of support personnel on the airwaves at a national road racing event. While I don’t excuse what happened I can certainly see that every great once in a while a miniscule percentile of communications breakdown finally comes into play. Seeing these events transpire on SPEED only underscores the need for good course control 100% of the time, and I personally chalk these incidents up to “lessons to take to heart” in our business model on the track we run out here on the West Coast.

Kudos to RRW for being a place where readers and industry professionals can openly and candidly exchange opinions and perspectives on making the sport safer.

Todd Robinson
Sales & Event Director
Pacific Track Time
Wrightwood, CA




In regards to this whole Sadowski/Yates/Tony thing, I just have to say that Sadowski saved alot of face with me by his formal apology. Hopefully it was not forced by the Speed Damage Control Division.

Based on a quote I saw in this thread, “Respect is something you earn. Respect is something you lose,” Dave has earned back my respect.

For the record, I think Speed’s team of White and Sadowski are very good. Now if Speed could just get Andres Cantor (the Spanish soccer “gooooooaaaaal” announcer) to be the “play by play” man…

Ryan Stefani





To David Sadowski:

I have always enjoyed your commentary on Speed Channel. Keep up the good work. You give very good insight to the racing, and you have great credibility. Really, the whole broadcast effort is very good, though I agree with your comments about filming the privateers a bit more.

I thought you were a little hard on Tony Ianarelli the other day, but he was also a bit innappropriate in his comments. In any event, your apology was very impressive.

Best regards,

Thomas A. Warr, MD
Great Falls, MT