Motorcycle Forums

jollyboy

I guessed you missed "Having Qatar and India back-to-back and Argentina before heading straight to North America for Texas would drastically cut freight and travel costs for teams"? Think before you speak....

Nothing Wrong With Jolly's Post

He's quiote right.

Even by doing successive flights, the new locations are so far incredibly away from each other any savings that could be realized is gone.

I live in Houston, Texas, to fly to Cordoba starts at $1400 for the cheap seats and it's 20 hours plus 6 or 7 hours of driving.  The GP teams would need to add 4 more hours of driving to get to Austin plus loading and unloading into trucks.

The longest flight for the GP round would be India to Argentina, which is about 35 hours and starts at $2700 for a 2 stop cheap seat.  Imagine these costs for transporting all the team's paddocks and bikes.  Also imagine the fatigue of such a long flight, then having to perform come Friday, especially since once you're off the plane, you need to still get the stuff to the track, 6 or 7 hours away.  It's going to be grueling and expensive. 

I think it's great that there's new tracks to race.  I look forward to it.  But I've saying since the 800s came in that they're not doing anything to save money in the end.  The bikes are being dumbed down but that isn't offsetting the final cost of a season of racing.

nostro

Id actually like your input on this...but dont be a wanker..factual based opinion on this ...you have had excellent posts in the past, except for the ones where you get all beligerent and personal...this one requires a prof conversation. Ok rossi goes to honda...yes he can no longer beat lorenzo on same equipment..so dream team is rossi/marquez...pedrosa to factory yam...nice i know. That would make a fantastic 2013 season...i admit rossi has not been able to tame the ducati like casey, but that does not make him washed up. He still has race wins in him and a move to factory honda gives him a chance to fight. Casey has talent but no develipment skills...rossi has sponsership money and can help honda...you dont have to agree but please give opinion based on stata not derision...to show my honour i will actually apologize for my nasty comments if you will givw forthright and manly answer

VFR

...your question is would it ever happen?

No - money talks but egos shout louder.
Too many ego's at play (and have been bruised in the past) for that scenario to playout.

In my humble opinion...

If I'm honest, I don't really care where they race so long as the racing is good and close, and it's the spectacle it should be.  It's nice that we get a round in the UK but it's too bloody expensive, the weather is usually crap, and I'm not really a fan of Silverstone anyway.

Spain and Portugal having 5 rounds between them, almost 1/3 of the season, is just crazy though.  So from this point of view I'm happy they are expanding in to new countries and using new circuits and nabbing some of the Iberian races.

Dorna's money saving credentials aren't good.  Why fly from Europe to Laguna, then back to Brno, then back to Indy, then back to Europe.  Madness, except that if both US races were back to back how many tickets would be sold in total?  Would people go to both if they were only 3 weeks apart?  No, so split them up and sell more tickets, but that means flying there twice.

If it were me, I'd keep Qatar as I like the spectale of them racing under floodlights and bugger the environmental costs (we've all got energy saving bulbs at home which surely evens up 5 or 6 nights in the gulf with the spot lights on?).  Sack Indy from the calendar, sure the place has history but the track is dull dull dull (from my sofa anyway).  Oh, and bring back Hockenheim and get a race in at Monza.....