Delayed Freight Causes Friday at the Argentina GP to Be Canceled

A broken down cargo freighter has thrown the schedule for the Argentina Grand Prix at Termas de Rio Hondo into chaos.

One of the aircraft carrying some of the freight from Indonesia to Argentina suffered problems, causing the freight to get stuck in Mombasa, Kenya, and delaying its arrival at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit.

With bikes from a number of teams missing – including the Gresini Ducati of MotoGP championship leader Enea Bastianini – it was decided to cancel practice for all three classes on Friday, and to begin the weekend on Saturday instead.

The problems are twofold. On the one hand, the bikes of several teams – including the Gresini and VR46 MotoGP squads, and the Marc VDS team in Moto2 – will only be delivered to the paddock very late on Thursday evening.

The bikes were not cleaned after the race in Indonesia, and the MotoGP bikes, who rode in the rain, are in need of a very thorough clean. Mechanics from one team took three hours just to clean the bikes which had arrived from Mandalika.

The other issue is that it is not just bikes that are missing. Crates belonging to equipment suppliers have also been affected, meaning that spare helmets, gloves, leathers, boots, etc are also missing.

Typically, at least one set of leathers will travel with race bikes, but the spares are needed in case of the inevitable crashes.

Missing bikes and spare equipment has made it impossible to get everything ready for Friday morning, without creating unsafe working conditions for paddock staff. Mechanics having to work on just a few hours sleep is a risk for everyone involved.

With Friday canceled, a new schedule has been drawn up for Saturday. It is a very hectic day of action, with two practice sessions for each class on Saturday morning/early afternoon. Moto3 and Moto2 get two 40-minute sessions, and MotoGP gets two 45-minute sessions.

Qualifying then happens as usual on Saturday afternoon, the only difference being that FP4 for MotoGP is now FP3.

Warm-up has also been extended for all three classes, Moto2 and Moto3 getting 20 minutes, MotoGP half an hour. The new schedule appears below:

Source: Dorna