Cycle News In The Paddock
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Phillip Island Finished | At Least the Penguins Will Be Pleased
Phillip Island gone! Three words that strike dread into the heart. It’s like canceling Mozart or the Beatles. Taking internationally revered classics and destroying them. Replace JS Bach with atonal rap, Shakespeare with low-brow reality TV.
Or in the case of Australia’s classic seaside track, with a long-redundant ex-F1 street circuit instead.
A street circuit! We’ll come back to that. But this is not the first time Phillip Island has lost the bike GP. After the first two blissful years there, 1989 and 1990 (both narrowly won by Wayne Gardner), the race migrated to Sydney’s bland and sterile Eastern Creek for six years, a move that only increased the paddock’s yearning for the fast sweepers and spectacular nature of the island circuit.
The 1997 return felt like coming home.
Oh, there were shortcomings. Facilities were primitive, the location rather quaint, and the accommodation likewise. The weather was wicked. Barry Sheene called it “the world capital of hypothermia.”
But the racing, oh, the racing.
Here was a track that brought all the best old-school virtues to modern racing. Fast and rhythmical, it combined very high speeds with subtlety and nuance. Riders loved it. Here, they had to temper the finest technique with raw courage. If there were any doubters, any who found it too daunting and difficult, they kept it to themselves.
A track where riding skill made the difference, more than horsepower or nimble handling.
Here was the true and genuine depth of motorcycle racing. No artificiality or pretense. No grandstanding. No sandbagging. Only the real thing.
Rewards for spectators were a natural corollary, whether they braved the breeze off the Bass Strait or watched on TV. Phillip Island was reliably marvelous.
Other great circuits exist. Brno, Aragon, Portimao, Termas de Rio Hondo, Mugello, etc. All share the ingredients of speed and subtlety. But arguably none to the same degree or with the same atmosphere as Phillip Island.
It wasn’t enough to save it. Faced with dwindling crowds, the primitive pits and paddock facilities, and a lack of expected improvement, fed-up Dorna has had enough. Short-sighted planning, contrasted with over-ambitious promises, must shoulder the blame, along with an unaccountable lack of support from the Victorian government for a premier sporting event.
But perhaps it was inevitable. Phillip Island was out of its time, as happened to Assen. And there wasn’t the will to provide the resources to remedy that.
It’s a sad loss.
I am not alone in harboring deathless memories of epic races there. The Aussieness of it all, Wayne Gardner’s opening two wins, Mick Doohan’s title-decider in 1998, dominant Casey Stoner from 2007 to 2012—four times on a Ducati, twice on a Honda—demonstrating that it’s a rider’s more than a machine’s circuit. Rossi’s five-year spell from 2001 to 2005, including overcoming a 10-second penalty for passing under a yellow flag. Marquez’s four fine wins.
And the unforgettable swell of sound, whether two- or four-stroke, of a close pack of leaders accelerating full bore out of the epic last-corner set.
What will replace this epic circuit? Step forward an enthusiastic Adelaide, home of a long-standing if little-admired street circuit, used by F1 in the last century, and set to take over MotoGP from 2027.
Motorcycle racing and road circuits have an unhappy history of danger and death. Early tracks like Switzerland’s Berne and Yugoslavia’s Opatija were quickly dropped. Likewise, Spa-Francorchamps and the Isle of Man were emasculated.
Comparisons with Adelaide are moot. It looks all wrong, a confined parkland track with several 90-degree bends, lined with walls and fences. A “modified layout” is promised to be suitable for MotoGP, so it will presumably comply with modern safety requirements. Lots of chicanes in lieu of run-off, perhaps?
That remains to be seen, of course, though there are already rumors that in the end the race will move to The Bend Motorsport Park, 60-odd miles away, but still in South Australia, whose regional government obtained the rights for MotoGP from an apparently reluctant Victoria state.
The shock move, abandoning MotoGP’s remotest but finest track for a city-based venue, is much in line with new owner Liberty Media’s addition of street circuits in their highly successful development of F1. Just how that will work for bikes remains to be seen. But it’s a worrying fact that MotoGP pilots operate at higher top speeds than F1 drivers, for whom Adelaide’s walls were already considered rather too close.
Is there anything positive to say?
Just one thing. Phillip Island is home to one of the world’s most charming wildlife spectacles, the nightly Penguin Parade, when platoons of Little (so-called Fairy) Penguins waddle ashore in numbers for the night.
The greatest possible contrast to a pack of MotoGP bikes and a parcel of rowdy fans. The penguins will doubtless be pleased by their absence.CN
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