MotoGP Calendar Madness

This will bore a lot of people but I need to have a bit of a rant about this. I mean it. Tediously dull for people who have no connection with truck driving, or motor sport. The bee is in my bonnet though, so I'm going to shout at cyberspace, where nobody can hear me whine.

In 2006 I had the huge privilege of driving a motor-home for a couple of MotoGP racers. I was employed by an English family who ran four rigs at the time, and probably even more now. I've loved no job more than that, and only the difficult working relationship with the family brought things to an end as the situation became untenable (patronising and bullying on the Hyde side, but wonderful and loving on the Jekyll side - but you never knew where you stood. The driver turnover rate for that concern was and is stupendous). But despite the bad times, even now I look upon those half dozen races with a longing warmth for the lifestyle of working on the continent, and being at the heart of what I believe is the most spectacular sport in the world. An all-too-brief taste of something I wanted a three course meal of - and still do.

The experience gave me an incredible insight into the world of international top class motor sport, even if the job I was doing was relatively easy when compared to the men and women who work for the teams themselves. The drivers who work for the racing outfits not only pilot millions of dollars worth of unique equipment around the world's roads, but are involved in constructing the spectacular hospitality units, working in the garage and pit crews, handle security, and some are even chefs. They work incredibly long hours over a race weekend that take a toll physically and mentally, and are away from home quite often for half the year. Despite these pressures, the competition for these jobs is fierce. People gladly put themselves through the stresses and strains, the highs and the lows. The rewards of being amongst the elite, and of competition, are worth it.

They are however often taken for granted by the people involved in the business and management of motor sport.

The prime example comes in the planning of the race schedule, or calendar. I was told several times by team "truckies", and by the family I worked for, that the people involved with planning the calendar rarely visited races at all, and had little understanding of the whole process of setting up for a grand prix. And so it is that these people who scribble down places and dates determine the year ahead. They have a tough task, I'll admit that. They need to allow in part for other events that might make a circuit unavailable, such as rock concerts and Formula One racing. They must also consider major international sporting events in other disciplines that might mean television scheduling clashes, such as the tennis finals at Wimbledon, golf majors, and so on. Occasionally the schedule calls for "back to back" race weekends. These are a necessary feature of the calendar which can also give the season a momentum that adds to the excitement of the sport as a whole. And so the year is set out for three world championship series, the 40 teams who make them happen, and the hundreds of people who work within them. Sometimes the task laid out before them is not just arduous, but verging on the epic.

Imagine if you will that the weekend's racing has come to an end on a Sunday. Entire hospitality units must be taken apart and packed into their respective trailers. Pit garages must be de-constructed and stowed. Exotic racing machines need to be made ready for travel. Motor-homes and their contents must be prepared for being driven, from the simple tasks of cleaning and stowing deck chairs down to the less pleasant job of emptying a weekend's worth of dirty water and effluent into public drains. Everything is cleaned meticulously before being packed away (and again when it's unpacked).
That equipment is then transported to the next circuit by the Thursday morning of a race weekend, at the latest, ready to be set up in its entirety for the business of racing which begins on a Friday. Quite often there's PR to be done so the outfits arrive by the Wednesday to make sure everything is present and correct. Motor-homes are typically there before the teams in order to make sure riders are accommodated from the moment they arrive at the circuit which can be any time from Wednesday night onward.

It's worth pointing out at this stage that large goods vehicles are fitted with tachographs, and their drivers must adhere to strict driver hours regulations that govern the time a driver can work in a day, how much of this can be spent driving, the length and regularity of breaks, with allowances for "double-manning", where two drivers share the duties. With speed regulators restricting a truck to 56mph (90km/h), a truck can potentially cover 500 miles in a day if the driver is incredibly lucky, 650 if it's double-manned.

Imagine then, with all this in mind, the sheer incredulity with which a motor racing "truckie" must view a race calendar for the coming season when it features such back-to-back scheduling as these:

1) Motegi (Japan) and Jerez (Spain) - few road miles but a long air freight flight.
2) Mugello (Tuscany, Italy) and Silverstone (Northamptonshire, England) - 1200 miles.
3) Assen (Northern Netherlands) and Barcelona (Northern Mediterranean Spain) - 1100 miles.
4) Sachsenring (Saxony, Eastern Germany) and Laguna Seca (California, USA) - again few road miles but enormous air freight distance.

The sport is also going through a period of financial constraint. Cost-cutting measures are being put in place, and still teams are finding they can't continue to be competitive on the money they can raise to compete. Despite this, the provisional calendar for 2010 takes the whole circus to Laguna Seca in California, back to Brno in the Czech Republic, back out again to the USA to visit Indianapolis, before heading to Rimini, in Italy. Utterly nonsensical to split the German and Czech grands prix with a fly-away to west coast America, particularly when the two European circuits are a mere 280 miles apart, even with a circuitous route to avoid mountain roads.

Typically a two or three week gap means teams return to their bases, which are mostly in Italy, Spain, and Germany. The mileage covered by drivers are still quite large as a result, but the pressure of time is not in force. There have been worse calendars too in recent years. 2006 in particular, the year I was driving, saw Assen following Barcelona. Assen is always a Saturday race so we lost a day from the schedule, meaning the whole pack-down, drive, and set-up had to be done in two days. I suspect few outfits did the run legally.

And so this rambling rant comes toward a close. When you watch the spectacle of motor sport, just think for a few seconds about the little people who make it happen. The boys and girls who build the paddock, physically run the spectacle, and move the whole show around the world. The legends might be on the circuit, duelling at 180mph, but the heroes are behind the scenes at a far slower speed but more hectic pace. It would be nice if you would, because the people who determine where they go sure as hell don't.


The provisional calendar is as follows:

April 11th - Qatar - Circuit Losail
April 25th - Japan - Motegi Twin Ring
May 2nd - Spain - Circuito Jerez
May 16th - France - Le Mans, Circuit Bugatti
May 30th - Italy - Mugello
June 6th - Great Britain - Silverstone
June 26th - Netherlands - TT Assen
July 4th - Catalunya - Catalunya
July 18th - Germany - Sachsenring
July 25th - United States - Laguna Seca
August 15th - Czech Republic - Brno
August 29th - Indianapolis - Indianapolis Motor Speedway
September 12th San Marino & Riviera di Rimini - Misano
September 19th - Hungary - Balatonring
October 10th - Malaysia - Sepang
October 17th - Australia - Phillip Island
October 31st - Portugal - Estoril
November 7th - Valencia Ricardo Tormo - Valencia