Strong winds have forced Dorna to cancel qualifying for the MotoGP class at Phillip Island.
Wind with gusts of over 70km/h made conditions impossible during FP4, and after Miguel Oliveira suffered a massive crash at Turn 1, blown off line and onto the grass, an impromptu meeting of the Safety Commission voted to cancel qualifying, deeming it too dangerous to continue.
Four seasons in one day. That’s how they describe the weather at Phillip Island, and that’s exactly what MotoGP got on Friday. Jack Miller’s day summed up conditions nicely. “It was quite windy early as the doors were nearly blown off my house,” the Pramac Ducati rider said.
“Then it started calming down, then bucketing down, and believe it or not I was sitting out having a coffee at 6:30 this morning in a t-shirt as it was 18 or 19 degrees and then as I was driving to my parents’ house the temperature started going down and down and then the rain came in. I thought it would be set in for the day but it managed to clear up this afternoon and we managed to get on the slick tires.”
In the end, the MotoGP riders got three session in different conditions. FP1 was cold, wet, and blustery. FP2 was warm, dry, and fairly sunny. And the special tire test session, to put the final touch on the new construction rear tire Michelin wants to introduce in 2020 was cooler, with temperatures dropping.
Those changing conditions had a fairly significant impact. First, it meant the MotoGP teams were trying to cram an entire weekend’s worth of setup work and tire testing into 35 minutes, followed by chasing a time for Q2 in the final 10 minutes.
Even Marc Márquez, who never stresses about chasing a time for Q2, stuck in a soft tire in pursuit of a quick lap, nearly losing out when he found his teammate Jorge Lorenzo sitting on the line through the final two corners.
From one seasonally misplaced track to another. Fresh from Motegi, which MotoGP visits at the tail end of typhoon season, the Grand Prix paddock heads south – a very long way south – to Phillip Island, on the south coast of Victoria in Australia, perched on the edge of the Bass Strait.
It is a glorious location at the end of the antipodean summer, with good weather very nearly guaranteed. But unfortunately, MotoGP doesn’t visit at the end of the antipodean summer in February or March.
Instead, MotoGP is condemned to brave the elements in October, when it is spring in the southern hemisphere.
And all because the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, the company which runs the MotoGP round at Phillip Island, is also the promoter of the Australian Formula 1 race, held in Melbourne Park, pays a premium to host the first F1 race of the year.
With Melbourne just under two hours away, the Australian Grand Prix Corporation doesn’t want to have its two biggest events too close together, to prevent fans from being forced to choose between the two races.
And having paid to make the F1 race the first of the season, moving MotoGP to October is the obvious choice. An understandable choice too: the F1 race at Melbourne Park draws over 100,000 fans on race day.
Race day at Phillip Island sees around 35,000 paying customers through the gates.
Episode 93 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Steve English joined by Gordon Ritchie on the mics, as they are now our WorldSBK reporting duo for the 2019 season.
Before we get into the show details, we should apologize for the audio quality on this episode. The circumstances of the weekend meant that it had to be recorded in a busy café, rather than a studio setting.
Rather than kill the show, we thought we’d publish it for those who can get through the clamoring dishes and noisy kids, because there is some really, really good WorldSBK knowledge shared between these two industry veterans.
That’s it! That is a wrap from Phillip Island and the opening round of the WorldSBK Championship season. It was a good showing for superbike racing, with a shakeup in the order of things.
The narrative for 2019 very much looks to continue the Ducati vs. Kawasaki trend from the last few seasons, but the list of riders who could be in the hunt has certainly widened.
The new Superpole Race format seems to be a hit as well, with the sprint race showing itself to be a gloves-off affair amongst the riders, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering that there are points and grid position on the line.
Phillip Island is always a wild card when it comes to predicting the season, and the next round in Thailand should give us more bearing on the state of the series, but we like what we see so far.
Speaking of which, we like what we see from Stephen McClements’ select photos from Australia on Sunday. Give them a look and enjoy!
Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
Shooting Saturday’s practice sessions and the first race of the 2019 season, Stephen brings us our first glimpse of superbike racing action this year.
We won’t hit you with any spoilers, but if the rest of the season pans out like Race 1 did on Saturday, WorldSBK fans are in for quite a treat this year.
Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
We have two Steves in Phillip Island this weekend for the WorldSBK, and for this gallery we are featuring the work of Mr. Stephen McClement. Shooting Friday’s practice sessions, Stephen brings us our first on-track glimpses of the 2019 season in proper.
The day’s activities saw Alvaro Bautista keeping his top spot from the testing days, but he only leads Jonathan Rea by a narrow margin of 0.014 seconds. Leon Haslam is in the charge as well, just 0.155 seconds back himself, while Lowes and Camier were closer to half a second back.
Chaz Davies finds himself surprisingly over a second behind his teammate, which doesn’t bode well for his championship. Though, we have many, many laps still to come from the season-opener.
And also, we have many more photos from Stephen still to come. Until then, enjoy this modest selection.
Photos: © 2019 Stephen McClements – All Rights Reserved
Steve sent us these photos from the WorldSBK test at Phillip Island, and it seemed like a good excuse to try the new “gallery post” function we’ve been working on for the site. Let us know what you think of the snaps, as well as this new feature.
Also, get excited for looks to be a cracking year in the WorldSBK Championship. The Australian round should be a real scrap, and it will be interesting to see the new Superpole Race format in the flesh. All that being said, who is your favorite to win?
Photos: © 2019 Steve English – All Rights Reserved
This World Superbike story is made possible by our A&R Pro members. If you like reading WorldSBK stories on Asphalt & Rubber, you should consider supporting this content by signing up for an A&R Pro account.
Episode 91 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see Neil Morrison, and Steve English on the mics, as we ramp up for the 2019 World Superbike Championship season.
With the WorldSBK paddock descending on Phillip Island this week, we see the riders getting their last pre-season testing done, before they head into the weekend’s season-opening round.
Who are the hot favorites? Who will be the dark horses? Who has made the most progress? And who remains a complete mystery? The guys discuss all that and more in this edition of the podcast.
Episode 86 of the Paddock Pass Podcast is out, and in it we see David Emmett and Steve English on the mics, covering the last three MotoGP flyaway races and previewing the upcoming Valencia GP.
It has been a while since we have had a chance to host a show, so there is much to discuss, and the guys get right down to it.
Amongst the discussion of the various rounds, there are some good side conversations about the internal workings of the GP factories, the career of Dani Pedrosa, and what makes a rider the “Great Ride of All Time” in the eyes of the MotoGP paddock.
Phillip Island is a glorious race track, in a glorious setting, with a history of serving up glorious racing, especially when the weather plays ball. On Sunday, it did just that, the circuit bathed in warm sunshine, almost taking the edge off the antarctic chill which can still hit the circuit in very early spring.
And great weather brought fantastic racing, starting with a spectacularly insane Moto3 race, followed up with a thrilling Moto2 race, and finally topped off with an intriguing and incident-packed MotoGP race.
The MotoGP grid arrived at Phillip Island mindful of the lessons of last year. In 2017, a large group had battled for the win for 20+ laps, until their tires were shot. Marc Márquez, having been mindful of his tires for much of the race, made his move in the last five laps, opening a gap over the chasing group of a couple of seconds. Everyone Márquez had beaten last year had spent the weekend concentrating on tire preservation for the last part of the race.
“Last year we lost the race because the last five laps, we didn’t have anything more,” Andrea Iannone said after practice. “Everybody had one or two tenths more than us, and at the end, finished in front of us.” Jack Miller, who had led the race for the first four laps in 2017, finishing seventh behind Iannone, made a similar point.
“What I learned from last year is try to manage the tire a little bit better,” the Australian said. “We’ve been playing a lot with the maps and setting up for the race. It’s not going to be a crazy fast race, almost from the get go, but it’ll wind up sort of five, six laps to go.”
