"On Line" - The MotoGP Blog

Crunch Time

From the blustery shores of Phillip Island, the MotoGP paddock have headed north into the tropics, swapping Australia’s chilly spring for Malaysia’s hot and humid northeast monsoon, packing away their quilted jackets and retrieving their lightest cotton shirts once again.

The contrast is not just in the climate, however. The two tracks could hardly be more different, in just about every way imaginable. The Phillip Island circuit sits well away from civilization, at the edge of an island looking out over the great Southern Ocean. Sepang, on the other hand, lies just a handful of miles from Kuala Lumpur, one of the great cities of Southeast Asia.

Matching its isolated location, the facilities at Phillip Island are rather basic, to put it kindly. Not so at Sepang, which boasts ultramodern paddock facilities, large, well-furnished pit garages and an air-conditioned media center, as well as two striking grandstands lining the back and the front straight.

The track layouts are also perfect examples of the difference between the old and the new. While Phillip Island is still based loosely on the public roads which once hosted the racing, Sepang is a purpose-built Tilke-designed CAD masterpiece, with each corner carefully calculated by computer. In this aspect, though, the new simply cannot rival the old, the Malaysian track’s complex layout no match for the glorious flowing ribbon of asphalt the rolls up and down Phillip Island’s landscape.