Two months ago, MotoGP announced that Phillip Island will lose the Australian Grand Prix, largely because the much-loved venue’s infrastructure isn’t up to the high standards now required by the Liberty-owned championship.
Therefore, I wonder what Liberty Media director and MotoGP Sports and Entertainment Group president Chase Carey made of events in Brazil last weekend. Was this what he expected from an enterprise that cost Liberty £3.5 billion?
MotoGP doesn’t mind slumming it now and again, so the paddock coped well with the chaos and made the racing happen, and plenty of fans turned up. Happy days all around?
Yes, but no. Nowadays, MotoGP likes to think of itself as a premier sport that’s all set to go mainstream, no longer just a niche pursuit for the purists. But running the sprint 80 minutes late, because a sinkhole had appeared on the start/finish, and shortening the main event by a third, because the track was falling apart, are not how premier sports work.
Some blamed the sinkhole on heavy rainfall, but Goainia’s rainy season lasts from October to April. In other words, heavy rainfall at this time of year is the norm, not the exception. And anyway, a racetrack shouldn’t collapse like that. End of story.
Credit, however, to the workers who fixed the problem so quickly, digging out the hole and filling it with quick-drying cement. They were the weekend’s true heroes.
There was no miracle fix on Sunday, when the track started breaking up between Turns 11 and 12 during the Moto2 race. Suddenly, the first Brazilian MotoGP race in 22 years was at risk because, inevitably, the asphalt degradation was on the racing line, so this was a safety issue.
Fans watch as Bezzecchi unleashes his disappearing act
Race Direction decided that the best option — presumably balancing rider safety with corporate reality — was to shorten the race by almost one third, down from 31 laps to 23 laps. In other words, they thought the track would be safe for 23 laps, but not for 24 or more.
This was an unprecedented last-minute decision — teams and riders were informed only after they had assembled on the grid. Two days of painstaking set-up work, out of the window, just like that.
Riders and teams were badly let down, so who was to blame? The potential for ground subsidence should’ve been highlighted by the geotechnical report required for all racetrack constructions. And the asphalt mix should’ve been good enough to at least last one weekend. MotoGP failed on both counts. These may have been local issues, but it is the responsibility of the MotoGP Sports and Entertainment Group to ensure standards are kept, wherever the racing is happening. Therefore MSEG failed in its responsibility at Goiania.
More than anyone, Aprilia rose above the chaos to continue its domination of MotoGP. Marco Bezzecchi‘s start-to-finish victory was the Noale brand’s fourth in a row, following his start-to-finish successes at Portimao and Valencia last autumn and at Buriram last month.
Most impressive, Bezzecchi and his crew recovered from a grim Friday, which had him finish the tricky, wet and dry pre-qualifying session in 20th. He came through Saturday’s Q1 to make the front row in Q2 and just miss the sprint podium, after team-mate Jorge Martin got the better of him. Bezzecchi knew things weren’t right in the sprint, so he focused on learning more about himself and the bike to be in better shape for Sunday.
Aprilia celebrates its second MotoGP one-two and its first since 2023, when Aleix Espargaró and Maverick Viñales finished first and second at Barcelona
Aprilia
When news of the shortened race broke, some riders switched from the medium rear to the soft, but the news seemed to reach the front of the grid before the rear.
“The team told me, ‘We don’t have time to change,’ but riders in front of me did change tyres,” said Tech3‘s back-row qualifier Enea Bastianini. “I saw many issues like this during the weekend. Nothing changes. We talk, but nothing changes…”
Aprilia may have had time to change tyres but it knew it wasn’t the right thing to do for Bezzecchi and the other RS-GP riders. The soft rear slick’s extra grip was too much for the bike, overpowering the front tyre into corners. The medium rear made the bike better balanced.
When the lights went out, Bezzecchi was in a race of his own. After four laps, he was 1.2sec out in front. Martin did briefly reduce the gap once he had taken second from pole-sitter Fabio Di Giannantonio, but he quickly realised he couldn’t risk pushing that hard for long. Nevertheless, the Spaniard still rode away from Di Giannantonio and sprint winner Marc Márquez, who struggled with the track, largely due to its numerous long right-handers. Just like he struggles at Barcelona.
Di Giannantonio had been beaten into second by Márquez at the end of the sprint and his body language told us he wasn’t going to let that happen again. When Márquez muscled his way past with four laps to go, the Italian immediately tried to counter-attack. He got his chance when Márquez lost the front riding across the disintegrating asphalt exiting Turn 11. That pushed the reigning champ wide and Di Giannantonio didn’t need a written invitation. The battle was “really beautiful,” said the VR46 man.
Di Giannatonio’s and Márquez’s podium battle was decided by the disintegrating asphalt
Thus, circuit conditions decided the last place on the podium. Not a good look.
Márquez may had got the worst of the racetrack falling to bits, but others also suffered, bruised and battered by stones spat at them by fast-spinning rear tyres.
“I was getting roosted the whole time,” said Jack Miller, who had a problem off the start. “I was dead last, so I was getting all the rocks.”
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By
Mat Oxley
This reminds me of the late, great Gene Romero, 1970 US Grand National champion and winner of the 1975 Daytona 200, who missed the Vietnam War thanks to taking a pummelling from racetrack debris during a flat-track event.
“I went down for the draft after I’d been racing at Ascot, which was a really fast clay track,” Romero told me. “Down the back straightaway, you got hit by these mud clods, which gave you these big red bruises that turned green and yellow. The guy at the draft board said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, I woke up one morning and it just happened.’ So I got a deferment.”
Aprilia’s speed at Goiania confirms that the RS-GP is a real title-winning force. But how will it go next weekend at COTA, where Michelin allocates its standard rear slick for the first time this year, instead of its heat-resistant rear, which suits the RS-GP better than it suits Ducati‘s Desmosedici?
And how will Márquez go at COTA? The anti-clockwise circuit is one of the 33-year-old’s happiest hunting grounds. If he doesn’t go well there, maybe MotoGP really is changing.
