‘Impossible’ for Japanese MotoGP to go ahead

MotoGP bosses have said it was ‘impossible’ for the Japanese MotoGP race to go ahead as scheduled this weekend.

The Twin Ring Motegi clash was due to be staged on Sunday (April 25) but was postponed until October 3 with over 1000 members of the paddock unable to travel to the Far East because of flight chaos caused by an Icelandic volcano.

International Race Teams Association boss Mike Trimby told MCN that it would have been impossible for the race to have been run with a large part of European airspace crippled for nearly a week.

Trimby said: “Dorna were monitoring the situation pretty much on an hour-by-hour basis.

“Last Saturday we did a survey amongst all the teams to find out where they were flying from, when they were flying and how many people were involved. There were a lot flying on Monday and most of those flights were already cancelled.

“Dorna were consulting with air traffic control and meteorologists and the prognosis was people weren’t going to able to get away on Monday or Tuesday.

“Once you lost that initial booking the replacement booking was unlikely to be for the next day because the people booked on that day got the priority.

“And given the volume in numbers of people who’d have been looking to change seats would have been incredibly difficult, if not possible.

“For example our flight was cancelled and the earliest we could have got to Japan was leaving the UK on the 22nd.

“With the time difference it would have meant arriving on Friday 23rd, so it just wasn’t feasible.”

The 2010 MotoGP campaign resumes in Jerez on May 2, with Motegi now scheduled to be round 14.