After the premature interruption of the Moto2 World Championship race in Australia, there was some uncertainty about whether the MotoGP sprint race would take place. The decision was to cancel it due to the strong wind.

Mike Webb, the race director of MotoGP, explained that the riders were consulted before making the decision, as were the team principals: ‘We had a meeting with all the the team principals shortly before we made the decision, with all the team principals. Loris [Capirossi, safety advisor] and Carlos [Ezpeleta, Dorna Sports chief sporting officer] have been talking to the riders, and Tomé [Alfonso, FIM safety office] talking to the MotoGP riders in their boxes to get their firsthand opinions. There is, as you can imagine, a big range of opinions of the riders, depending on who they are, their own circunstances, whatever… so, a huge range’.

According to the British rider, attempting to start the race with worse conditions than those at the time of the interruption of the Moto2 race was not under consideration: ‘Therefore, we spoke to the teams to say: «These are our options, this is the situation as it is at the moment». But to even start again, to even do a sighting lap and try to run a race when the weather condition is measurably worse than it was when we showed the red flag… Sorry, that’s not an option, we couldn’t do it’.

O conteúdo ‘Try to run a rece when the weather was worse than when we showed the red flag wasn’t an option’ – Mike Webb aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.

The MotoGP organization made the difficult decision to cancel the sprint race of the Australian GP due to the gusty winds at Phillip Island, making it impossible to hold the race. This was a situation that was already known to be possible considering the weather forecasts, which is why the main race was rescheduled for Saturday. The race director, Mike Webb, admitted that there was no other possible decision.

The official explained that the wind made it impossible to hold the race, given the prior knowledge that it would be challenging, based on the experience from 2019: ‘We had no choice in the end. We knew the forecast was, and strangely for here, it’s been consistent all week that this was going happen on Sunday. And that’s why we preemptively changed the race [for Saturday]. The conditions turned out to be what was predicted. Just to be clear, the rain was never an issue, it’s wind, and we know from past experience, especially here, and especially with the wind in that particular direction, Turn 1, and 7/8 are very trying. We have had this experience in 2019 – when we red-flagged the MotoGP qualifying for the same reason. So we were aware’.

Webb then stated that the wind’s intensity allowed for the start of Sunday but its escalation made the conditions impractical: ‘Knowing what the wind conditions were in 2019, when we last had bad wind, what it’s been every day this weekend and during this week, and during today, with the updates as fast as they can give us, the wind was below the level of 2019 and reasonable for the start of the day. By the time there was a gust… well,, there were gusts throughout and the Moto2 race was red-flagged because of that, pretty obviously’.

According to the British rider, the conditions only worsened after that red flag: ‘All the way through the day we’re monitoring what is the steady wind condition and what are the gusts peaking at, and that number slowly went up during the day. Having red-flagged a race for wind conditions, unless it got better, there’s no way we could start another race, and it didn’t get better, it got worse. So, in the end we had no choice’.

O conteúdo Mike Webb gives all the explanations regarding the cancellation fo the sprint race: ‘We had no choice’ aparece primeiro em Motorcycle Sports.