Moto3: Opening night of Qatar test abandoned

The opening night of action at the combined Moto2 and Moto3 test in Qatar has been abandoned, after heavy rain hit the Losail circuit only an hour into the evening’s planned track action.

With only one session of Moto3 action complete – and with only a handful of riders taking to the track in the daylight conditions – the rain came down just as Moto2 was preparing to start their first run of the evening just after 4pm local time.

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And with tyre manufacturers Dunlop not bringing wet tyres to the event despite organisers promising that the premiere class will break with tradition and race under the floodlights in the rain this year, John McPhee says that they made the right call tonight by calling the evening to an early close.

“To do any laps here in the wet just defeats the purpose – we’re not going to ride here in the race weekend if it’s raining, so there wasn’t even a question mark – it was the obvious thing to do. I’m hoping we get some dry track time tomorrow though, as Honda have brought a new engine and some other new parts and I’m looking forward to trying them out.

“The lights here are all positioned really high, so I’m not sure how much glare there would be in the rain. It’s a hard one to call, because I’ve not actually tried it. They’ll definitely need to turn off the rain lights on the rear of the seats though, because I think that will cause a fair bit of glare.”

Testing is set to resume tomorrow at 1500 local time (1200 UK time), running until 2230.

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