{"id":490272,"date":"2026-03-23T03:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T03:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490272\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T03:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T03:13:10","slug":"why-motogps-brazil-race-was-suddenly-slashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490272\/","title":{"rendered":"Why MotoGP’s Brazil race was suddenly slashed"},"content":{"rendered":"

MotoGP riders have shed some more light on the sudden shortening of the Brazilian Grand Prix at Goiania due to track damage.<\/p>\n

The grand prix at Goiania – the second (after the sprint on Saturday) premier-class race at the venue in nearly 40 years – was due to run over 31 laps but was suddenly reduced to 23 just minutes before the start.<\/p>\n

The culprit was the surface apparently breaking up in the Turns 11-12 sequence of right-handers, as noted by multiple riders as they completed their sighting laps to the grid.<\/p>\n

Marc Marquez (Ducati) and Joan Mir (Honda) were among those to report this.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Brazil<\/p>\n

“I went on the warm-up lap and I thought that somebody had driven a truck over there or something, like, put mud across or something – because it was a different colour!” recalled KTM rider Brad Binder. “I thought it was weird.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Then when they said something on the grid, I thought ‘OK, well, that’s the reason’. And when I was behind all the bikes, it was looking like a little stone festival there. Just stones shooting out all over the place.”<\/p>\n

Multiple riders got pelted by stones in that area, with Enea Bastianini taking a painful hit to the shoulder, Mir getting “a big one” to the knee and Yamaha rider Alex Rins ending up with a considerably swollen index finger on his right hand.<\/p>\n

“F***in’ getting roostered the whole time! I was dead last so I was copping all the rocks. Yeah. It was a lot of asphalt coming out,” said Pramac Yamaha rider Jack Miller, whose team-mate Toprak Razgatlioglu turned up at his media debrief brandishing lumps of asphalt he\u2019d removed from inside his racing boot (pictured below).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Multiple riders recalled the 2022 occasion of the Indonesian Grand Prix return, when the race was cut from 27 laps to 20 – likewise due to track deterioration seemingly due to extreme heat.<\/p>\n

By and large, riders – even those pelted with stones – were satisfied with the distance reduction as a sufficient safety measure. Nobody crashed in that area of the track in the end – though Marc Marquez came very close, surrendering a podium finish as a result.<\/p>\n

“It’s true that, if you touch that point, that was the racing line, it was super slippery,” Marquez said. “And on that lap I touched a little bit that point, I lost the front and then I went to the kerb.<\/p>\n

“I decided on the kerb not to lean a lot, and I knew that Diggia [Fabio Di Giannantonio] was close and he will overtake me. But better fourth place than a crash.”<\/p>\n

\"Brazil<\/p>\n

But Marquez took responsibility for the near-crash and felt conditions had been acceptable. His brother Alex was more of a dissenting voice.<\/p>\n

“Quite unacceptable the conditions that we had today, honestly speaking,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think they will need to resurface everything.”<\/p>\n

Communication and timing the biggest complaint<\/p>\n

Remarkably, the actual manner of the restart seemed to prove more controversial than the fact itself of racing on a deteriorating surface.<\/p>\n

The information about the reduced race distance came minutes before the start, with no delay to allow teams to react. Many will have presumably entertained a switch from the medium rear to the faster but less durable soft rear – and, indeed, KTM rider Pedro Acosta confirmed it was a choice he’d made with knowledge of the new race distance.<\/p>\n

Alex Marquez didn’t switch but too admitted he’d known early enough, saying: “I think it would have been better to do a \u2018start delayed\u2019 and then everyone would be able to prepare in the same time or change the tyres.”<\/p>\n

“Maybe the guys at the front of the grid got the information a bit earlier. But when I was lining up on the last row, we were the last ones to hear it. By the time we got it, there’s no time to change,” mused Binder.<\/p>\n

His KTM stablemate Bastianini was much more irritated.<\/p>\n

“It was a s**t. It was a s**t. Because, in a world championship – it’s a big mistake. The message to the teams arrived at the end during the last minute. We had no time to change the tyres.<\/p>\n

“The team told me ‘we don’t have time to change’ – but the other riders in front of me, they changed the tyre!<\/p>\n

“The good choice was to wait five minutes, to wait for the situation to be clear to all the riders.<\/p>\n

“I saw many [organisational] issues during that weekend like this, and, well, I think nothing changes. We talk but nothing changes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MotoGP riders have shed some more light on the sudden shortening of the Brazilian Grand Prix at Goiania…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-490272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}