The motorcycle world championships move around the world, competing in different countries and tracks, some of which are certainly exotic. In the case of Dorna-organized events (MotoGP and World Superbike), the incursion into the Asian region is increasing, with new circuits constantly being added to the calendars.
One of the latest to be added is Mandalika, Indonesia. The circuit is very recent, inaugurated in 2021, and winds its way a few meters from the sea of Lombok, in one of the most touristic areas of the country. The facility doesn’t particularly stand out for its design, too reminiscent of other Asian circuits such as Buriram, Thailand, even if it doesn’t go to the extreme of offering boring races.
However, there is one component that is becoming a constant and starting to irritate teams and riders: the dirt on the track.
In Mandalika there is almost no activity during the year and the dust and other debris end up settling on the already poorly rubberized asphalt. The problem arises when the riders go to the circuit and go out for the first session, as they are faced with an asphalt that offers no grip, as if it were wet.
In this aerial image you can appreciate how only there is a clean stretch of tray.
This is the main reason for the high number of crashes (with occasional red flags) that occurred in the second round of the 2023 World Superbike Championship, held last weekend. Several incidents occurred in the first sessions (one of which involved Iker Lecuona, who suffered a serious injury in an accident at the same circuit last year), and as the races continued the situation got even worse.
Many riders complained to the media, but the one who did it most clearly was Loris Baz. The French rider, always forthright, was the one who had the worst in Mandalika: Alex Lowes hit him on the right leg in the Superpole Race, causing him several fractures.
According to the BMW privateer driver, the cause of the accident was not Lowes’ maneuver, but the state of the track.
“Let me explain what happened,” she wrote on her social media at the end of the weekend. “The Mandalika track and Argentina are always very dirty when we arrive. This means we have to clean it as we ride. But we always ride the same line, so there’s only one clean track that offers grip, about a meter wide.”
“When we try to overtake, we usually leave enough space at the start of the manoeuvre, especially for safety reasons. But in situations like this, it can’t be done, because if you leave space for him, you enter the dirty area and end up going straight or to crash. The other option is to try to put two bikes less than 80cm apart… and that’s why we’ve seen crashes like mine and many others.”
Syahrin, metiéndose en la zona sucia para adelantar a Sykes.
In other words, according to Baz, Lowes didn’t have a clean stretch of asphalt to try to overtake, nor did he have the space to give him a safe margin. The result? A bad impact that ended with an injury for the Frenchman.
“We didn’t have a 1% margin of error at the start, especially in turn 2, with twenty bikes side by side,” complained the former MotoGP rider. “It’s not my job to evaluate the different options, but all the riders agree that it’s not nice to ride on circuits where no one has raced for months.”
#SBK #Dirt #track #outrags #riders #Mandalika