Submitted by Kropotkin on Fri, 2008-10-03 00:29.
There can hardly be a greater contrast between Motegi, the track where MotoGP spent last weekend, and Phillip Island, where they are headed next. Motegi is pretty much a state-of-the-art facility, with spacious pit garages, excellent spectator facilities and an air-conditioned press area. Phillip Island, on the other hand, is like a trip back to the 1950s: The pit garages are about as sturdy as your average garden shed, the spectator seating consists mostly of grass, and the commentary positions sway gently in the winds which sweep across the Bass Strait and buffet the circuit.
But despite the ramshackle pits, cramped press room and spartan spectator facilities, the riders, teams, press and fans all love Phillip Island, and would choose the Australian circuit over Motegi every time. For the track layouts are just as much a reflection of the philosophy and history of each circuit as the facilities are. The Motegi circuit is a purpose-built testing facility, and consequently, each turn is precisely engineered to test a particular aspect of vehicle dynamics, and connected to the following corner by the shortest means possible.
Nature Versus Nurture
Phillip Island, on the other hand, is an ancient road course which has grown and mutated organically over time to become a flowing, rolling ribbon of tarmac sweeping over the hills and dales of the terrain. None of the corners were really designed, and apart from the front straight hosting the start and finish line, there's hardly a straight line on the track. It is a testament to the genius of nature, rather than the human intellect, and shows just what can be done when track designers submit to the landscape, rather than dictate to it from behind a CAD station.
The rightness of this approach is made very forcefully straight from the first corner. As you cross the line to start the lap, the Gardner Straight drops away ahead of you, before you start braking for Doohan Corner. The corner does its venerable name perfect justice: it is big, fast, and very, very scary. It's then up and over the Southern Loop, the first of the many long left handers, followed by another fast left flick before the first opportunity to pass on the brakes.
Honda Corner is - by the standards of Phillip Island - a painfully slow right, with plenty of chances to outbrake your rivals into the turn. Naturally, this is likely leave you at a disadvantage on the exit, heeled over for the curve of Turn 5, before hitting another aptly named corner. Turn 6 sits at the very edge of the Island, not very far from the rocky shores which are lashed by the wind and weather coming in from the Bass Strait. Climbing up to Turn 6 with nothing ahead of you but sky, and a solitary tree, it feels like you are approaching the end of the world. They could have called this cold, wind-blown and lonely corner Finis Terra, but found a better name instead: Siberia.
Stairway To Heaven
Once out of Siberia, the track twists and turns, rolling downhill again past Hayshed, before climbing, gently at first, then steeply up to the most important part of the track, and one of the most spectacular spots in motorcycle racing. Laguna Seca has the Corkscrew, Donington Park has the Craner Curves, but Phillip Island has Lukey Heights. As you start to turn in, the climb gets steeper, taking you up, and off to the left. Then, just as you hit the apex of the corner, the turn starts to fall away from under you, gradually at first, then ever more precipitously, casting you down into the tight right hander of MG.
In the flat, two-dimensional simplicity of a paper track map, it looks simple enough. But in all three glorious dimensions, it is both a thing of beauty and big-time trouble rolled into one. For a start, there's the difficulty of the corners themselves. Gravity is pushing the weight of the bike backward as you push up the hill, yet you are heeled hard over to get through the turn. Then you hit the brow of the hill, the balance of the bike shifting as the ground starts to drop away, just as you start to think about sitting the bike up for the approach to MG.
As if that weren't bad enough, you are now pitched forward, both by the force of being hard on the brakes and the downhill drop to the bottom of the hill. The front tire is squashed flat, loaded to the limit, yet now you have to fling the bike over again right to get the tight line into the hairpin, ready for the fast and long lefts which follow. The whole section is crucial to a fast lap, yet danger beckons at almost every yard. Go too slow, and you lose many tenths of a second. Go too fast, and you can wash out at the top of the hill, or at the bottom, and your race, or even your weekend, is over.
