This weekend’s Portuguese Grand Prix marks an important weekend for the MotoGP world championship.
It isn’t just the first race of the season back in Europe, often seen as the traditional starting point of serious title bids after four even more unusual than normal flyaway rounds.
In our weird post-pandemic world, it’s also perhaps the first ‘normal’ race since Valencia 2019.
It seems like almost a lifetime ago since the paddock, the championship and indeed the whole world was turned upside down by COVID. When the series headed to Qatar for pre-season tests in early 2020, coronavirus was an almost unheard-of word – but that changed in only a matter of weeks.
The first major issue, of course, was the cancellation of the opening race for the premier class. With Moto2 and Moto3 already at Lusail for testing, their races ran as planned – but with the very earliest travel restrictions hitting Italian travellers, it meant no chance at all for the main event to go ahead because so many of the MotoGP paddock simply couldn’t get there.
And in fact, no further races went ahead for four months, as the pandemic hit its first peak and racing was suspended until July. It eventually kicked off again under the most restrictive of rules that limited all but 25 personnel from every team from the paddock (and with fans and media locked out completely), and it was well into the year before even that started to change.
2021 started out a little better, but not much. Journalists were unable to speak face to face to riders. Teams weren’t allowed to mix with people outside their own squads.
Fans, originally allowed in for practice in Qatar, were swiftly banned again after a spike in cases. And of course, the calendar remained looking very different as countries applied varying level of restrictions on both their own citizens and foreign visitors.
Thankfully, as 2022 started, things have started to look increasingly normal, as cases remain high but death rates plummet thanks to the effect of vaccines.
Fans have thankfully been allowed to attend races again, the paddock can mingle almost as normal, and last weekend’s Grand Prix of the Americas marked the first time that we could walk through the paddock without wearing masks (although they’ll still be needed in indoor areas).
It’ll also be the first time since the second race of 2020, I think, where no form of testing is needed to enter the paddock or the host country, just a vaccine certificate.
I’ve been a one-man operation during the pandemic, travelling and working solo for the most part, and I’ve already racked up a PCR testing bill well in excess of £5000 now – so just imagine the added expense that’s been put on teams of up to 60 people who’ve already seen their sponsorship revenue hit by closed-doors races.
The return to normality couldn’t come at a better time, either, as the series heads to Portugal’s Portimao circuit – a venue that has now held races three times since the start of the pandemic but has yet to have one with a full crowd in attendance.
An incredibly popular event thanks to the national love for KTM rider Miguel Oliveira, the runaway winner behind closed doors in 2020, there’s no doubt that there’s going to be a whopping crowd to welcome him, finally, to a relatively normal grand prix – and it’s no less than both team and racer deserve.
Even inside the paddock – normally a somewhat controlled space – things are beginning to feel normal. At the Circuit of the Americas in Texas last week, the paddock was pretty much its old self again, bustling with activity even if overseas races tend to have a smaller number of guests and staff thanks to the absence of hospitality suites, full support teams and rider motorhomes.
While the paddock might remain locked off to most during a race weekend, the return to a form of normality is exceptional news for MotoGP’s charity Two Wheels for Life, as it means that its traditional Day of Champions at Silverstone should absolutely go ahead as usual, giving people the chance to step inside the paddock while helping raise money for a great cause at the same time.
It’s not an understatement to say that the pandemic has been exceptionally hard for many people. Success and status in the MotoGP world hasn’t protected anyone from the worst impact of two exceptionally hard years for the whole world, but MotoGP hopefully has brought about some light relief in the midst of it – and long may that last as the 2022 season kicks up a gear and starts to feel like normal life again.
