SILVERSTONE SHAMBLES
DORNA MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
After the hottest summer on record there was always an air of inevitability that the weather wouldn’t play ball by the time the MotoGP circus rolled into town. The cancelled 2018 GroPro British Grand Prix had all the potential for greatness, but it just wasn’t to be. Events started to go downhill during the closing stages of FP4 when Alex Rins hit a huge pool of standing water sending him aquaplaning uncontrollably towards the edge of the circuit, prompting him to bail at 120mph. He wasn’t the only victim of the track’s poor condition, with Tito Rabat, among others, crashing at the very same corner, shattering his right femur, tibia and fibula as well as dislocating his knee and ending his season. And to really rub salt in the wounds, the following day’s forecast was for even heavier downpours. Silverstone was at crisis point, and the whole world could see it.
Come Sunday morning the rain started in the latter moments of the Moto3 warm-up. Although it was pretty light rain it wouldn’t stop for the rest of the day. As the MotoGP riders took their sighting lap it was immediately clear that they couldn’t safely start the race. The aquaplaning was so severe that riders were uncontrollably losing traction with minimal throttle and even the engine braking was too strong to cope with the amount of standing water. The start was pushed back and a series of delays, track inspections and announcements from Race Control followed. The drenched masses around the circuit waited hopefully for the weather to clear for long enough to get racing. Sadly despite the track being constantly swept by a number of machines in an effort to clear the standing water it was in vain as just after 4pm when it had become clear that the condition of the track was not improving, the unthinkable was announced that all races were cancelled. A disaster. Understandably the anger soon gained momentum but where did the blame lie and how did this happen?
Race director Mike Webb was clear in his view that it was absolutely the fault of the new surface that had been laid in February. After all, we raced in heavier rain in 2015 with no problems. When FIM Grand Prix safety officer Franco Uncini inspected the new surface in March, barring a couple of bumps which required smoothing out, it was for all intents and purposes perfect. Indeed Cal Crutchlow thought much the same when he rode the new surface on a Honda RCV1000R in early spring. Something changed between March and August. By the time the F1 race came around it was clear that the amount of bumps was becoming a big problem. Still there had been no significant rain to give a clue as to the problems with standing water and the lack of drainage.
Should they have just got on with it and raced anyway? Definitely not. While a handful of the riders (Miller, Redding, Zarco) wanted to race, it has to be a majority decision. Sure the severity of Rabat’s injury probably influenced the decision but that is not a bad thing. There’s far too much rose-tinted-specs-ism these days. Rider-led safety is one of the most positive changes to top level bike racing in the last 30 years. The dark days of race promoters forcing riders to risk everything in lethal conditions can stay firmly in the past.
Could they have run the race on Monday? This was never really feasible despite plenty of comments to the contrary. Yes it may have been a Bank Holiday and undoubtedly plenty of fans would have happily returned but over 2,500 team and official staff plus riders, plus over 300 trucks, not to mention members of the media were all booked on cross-channel boats and planes on Sunday night/ Monday. Not to mention the 3,000 temporary staff that it takes to put on an event of this scale. That’s before you even consider the TV schedules, equipment on hire, slots booked on the broadcasting satellites etc.
Worryingly there will now be serious doubts over the future of the British GP. While Silverstone have subsequently stated their commitment to MotoGP and the series promoters Dorna have underlined their desire to see the GP return to Silverstone, they have been clear that they will not return unless the circuit has been resurfaced again.
Once Silverstone have finally processed all of the refunds and the smoke has cleared, attention will turn to making sure such a scenario never happens again. You can't predict the weather, but that's where finite planning, preparation and foresight comes into its own. It's in everyone's interest that Silverstone does whatever's necessary to redeem the situation and put fans’ and teams’ minds at rest that unwanted bouts of the wet stuff will never stop play again. Maybe it's also on Dorna and the FIM to come up with a robust system for overseeing and homologating the resurfacing of all GP level circuits. We simply can’t afford to lose our home GP.