The opening day of track action at the Argentine Grand Prix has been officially cancelled, as reported by The Race earlier today.
With freight issues meaning that some teams won’t receive their equipment until Friday, the entire three-day event has been compressed into only two.
In the new schedule, Moto3 action will now kick off the weekend on Saturday morning at 0845 local time, with only free practice one and two for both Moto2 and Moto3 before they head directly into qualifying sessions. MotoGP will have a slightly different timetable, with an FP3 session taking place before the premier class’s qualifying session, in the spot traditionally held by FP4.
The problems have been hinted at for some time, after one of four cargo planes travelling from the last race in Indonesia broke down en route. That meant that one of the other aircraft was forced to make a 32,000km round trip from Argentina back to the Mandalika circuit, severely delaying a number of teams’ equipment arriving.
The worst-hit teams are believed to be the VR46 and Gresini Racing Ducati MotoGP outfits, as well as their respective Moto2 teams and a host of other teams in the smaller classes.
The paddock’s support teams have also been badly affected, with many equipment, parts and helmet companies also not yet receiving their shipping crates.
The logistical issues, all stemming from a cargo plane which has broken down in Mombasa, Kenya, come as perhaps a not-unexpected consequence of the decision to organise two races on opposite sides of the world only two weeks apart.
Both the Termas de Rio Hondo track and Indonesia’s new Mandalika Bay venue are over 1000 km from their nearest respective major international airports, adding more hurdles to an already-crowded MotoGP calendar.
It’s also not the first time that Termas has been at the centre of logistics issues in the series, with a back-to-back schedule with the Circuit of the Americas in 2016 meaning that cancelled passenger flights out of the rural track created similar problems, with some teams forced to travel from South America to Texas via Europe.
That has since been negated via adding an additional weekend between the two races – but with the 2022 calendar expanding to a record-breaking 21 rounds, they will once again return to being back-to-back races.
