That was fun, wasn’t it?
The biggest MotoGP crowd the Island had ever seen since the good old days – a whopping 90,000-plus – all revved up for the last race at the best racetrack on earth. And it was rained out.
Too bad, so sad, huh?
But is that what really happened?
Yes. Sort of.
Please let me explain what actually happened, and more importantly WHY it happened, because no-one else will.
Everyone else will issue platitudes.
I want to tell you about the weekend that was and will never be repeated. I was there from Wednesday. I left Monday morning. I think they were still skull-dragging cars out of the bog across from the main gate. They were doing that at midnight on Sunday.
Let me set the stage. I know many of you will want to know who is responsible for what happened – or didn’t happen – at Phillip Island, and it is important that you do.
So, MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group (formerly known as Dorna Sports) is the exclusive commercial and broadcast rights holder for the MotoGP World Championship. It oversees the whole shooting match globally and controls the commercial side of the sport. It works with the FIM (the world governing body for motorcycle sport) to set the championship standards and to set the requirements for all the circuits.
Interesting fact: Both Dorna and the FIM have required infrastructure upgrades at Phillip Island as part of the hosting agreements. None of those have ever been completed. Or even started, just in case you’re still somehow wondering why Phillip Island lost the rights to hold the event.
So that’s what MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group does. But who runs the actual Phillip Island event?
That would be Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC), which is a statutory arm of the Victorian State Government. And I know you’re gagging to know what it is responsible for.
Well, it must promote and deliver the Australian MotoGP event, by managing event operations, ticketing, spectators, hospitality, marketing, and local commercial activities. The AGPC leases the racetrack to deliver the event.
And since it has always been utterly shit at fulfilling its responsibilities, the Australian MotoGP round has gone to Adelaide.
The AGPC’s glorious shitness was never more evident than it was during the “Final Roar” as this last weekend was billed.
Yes, it rained. I know. How can the AGPC be blamed for the weather? Of course, it can’t. Phillip Island will Phillip Island. So, no-one with an ounce of sense is blaming the AGPC for the weather.
What the AGPC can and must be blamed for is how it dealt with that weather. And no, the weather was not a surprise. The rain, 35 to 45mm, was predicted as early as Wednesday.
It rained in the morning on Saturday, but the Sprint Race went ahead in the afternoon when it was dry. Great race. Martin looked like he wanted to fight Marquez, until Martin crashed out and Marc went on to win.
There were already issues with the massive crowd. The usual one-and-a-half hour run from Melbourne to Island was taking almost six hours. Traffic was at a standstill for tens of kilometres trying to get onto the Island. Victoria Police was helping everything by booking motorcycle riders lane-filtering through the gridlock. KPIs are KPIs, right, VicPol?
That night, the rain started again. It rained all night. And all the next day. The track was having issues at Turn 12 because the gravel trap there is higher than the track and it fills up with water and that water runs across the track for hours after the rain stops. Turn Four has the same issue.
Of course, there is a truck that is used to suck the water out of the gravel trap. But at 10am on Sunday, that truck was stuck in traffic and almost two hours away from the gravel trap that needed sucking.
The capacity crowd (and that capacity is set by VicPol) was sitting or standing in the rain the whole time. If it was sitting, it was sitting in temporary grandstands only a few of which had roofs. Those roofs work great if the rain is falling straight down. But the slightest wind sends the rain sideways. But there’s never any wind at the Island, right?
For the standing people, they were either ankle deep in mud, in one of the temporary enclosed alcohol-vending “facilities”, or in the utterly wretched Expo shed, which is a hothouse with humidity levels higher than the Amazon jungle. I have worked in that hole many times and I feel sorry for the poor motorcycle industry people who pull long hard hours all weekend in that dreadful shithole. Air conditioning is a bridge too far for the Expo.
Once again, no gravel was set down on any of the paths. No bark chips that would go some way to mitigating the mud that invariably forms everywhere.
But it is most awful out where they make you park your bikes and cars. Yes, that’s the row of cow-paddocks opposite the main gate. Of course, the AGPC closed the carparks at some stage that morning after a whole bunch of people were already parked there. But it kept letting bikes park there. Nice, huh?
People were being sent back to Cowes and told to park their vehicles there and catch buses to the circuit.
Still, no-one cancelled the race. Instead, we kept getting updates. We were told the race would eventually take place, and it would be followed by the lesser classes. Then it was decided the race would take certainly take place, but the lesser classes would be cancelled.
Then it was 3.30pm and it was announced the race was cancelled and the crowd would get a parade lap at 4pm.
The huge issue, as we were told, was the medical helicopter could not fly. Or if it could fly, it could not land in Melbourne. Phillip Island is one of there racetracks where a medical helicopter is mandated because the hospital is so far away.
Why could the helicopter not fly? After all, helicopters fly in all sorts of lousy weather. I have seen them winching people out of Everest Base Camp in a blizzard. I have seen them roping people off stranded ships in tossing seas. Helicopters are designed to fly in all sorts of shit weather.
But not all helicopters can do this. You see, only a certain type of helicopter can fly in the rain with poor visibility. That kind of helicopter requires a pilot and a co-pilot, and it must have the necessary instruments to see through the bad weather.
That was not the kind of helicopter the AGPC hired. Never mind that bad weather was predicted for the Sunday. The AGPC decided, for reasons only known to itself, that an all-weather medical chopper was not required.
What was required was for the crowd to stay at the track and avail itself of the wonderful yummies on sale to go with the vastly over-priced piss being flogged, while it waited for the race to be cancelled.
And it was always going to be cancelled. An idiot could’ve seen that at noon.
Yes, there will be ticket refunds for the Sunday. You should get that eventually. But that does not in any way mitigate the utter mismanagement of this event by the AGPC, yet again.
But hopefully it explains, once and for all, why Phillip Island lost the race to Adelaide.
Thanks, as always, for nothing, AGPC.
