Miller “sad for the Aussie fans” if MotoGP Sprint cancelled

Red Bull KTM rider Jack Miller will be sad for his home fans if today’s MotoGP Sprint at Phillip Island is cancelled due to dangerously high winds.

The 2023 Australian event has already been an unprecedented occasion with the decision taken on Friday to bring the Grand Prix race forward to Saturday in order to ensure that it goes ahead.

A second revision has been made to the schedule since then, which includes moving the Sprint up to 13:00 local time/AEDT after it had simply been swapped with the Grand Prix race initially.

Winds are, at time of writing, forecast to hit 52km/h at 14:00, the original Sunday race start time, and continue to increase through the afternoon.

The hope, then, is that a race before then will still be feasible, but winds of 44km/h are predicted at 11:00, and it is likely to rain for most/all of the day.

“I feel sad for the Aussie fans, but that’s the risk we run down here,” said Miller, who finished seventh in the Grand Prix race.

“I mean, we’ve had the most beautiful, stunning location for a motorcycle track, the last three days, but the irony of that is, it also turns to shit.

“So, fingers crossed we have been panicking too much and it does its typical Phillip Island thing and does the opposite of what it says it’s going to do, but we’ll have to just wait and see, I guess.”

The windy conditions experienced four years ago at Phillip Island inspired a special rule, which exists to this day, whereby teams are allowed to remove their winglets for safety reasons at the Australian circuit.

Back then, in the early years of ‘aero fairings’, qualifying was postponed to Sunday morning after Miguel Oliveira was quite literally blown off the track in practice.

The theory is that the various appendages make MotoGP bikes more susceptible to wind than those of Moto2 and Moto3, although Miller is not completely convinced.

“To a degree [the aerodynamics make the wind more dangerous],” he remarked.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s worse here.

“For example, coming out of [Turn] 2, towards Stoner [Corner], I definitely remember it being a little bit more sketchy in the past than it is nowadays in terms of wheelie, in terms of the wind coming down the front straight.

“It definitely can get more hairy than what it is nowadays, so it has its positives and negatives, like any sort of new item.

“But for sure, the end of this front straight at 350km/h, when the bikes come past you in a slipstream, you can feel that, I can tell you that for free.”

If the conditions allow, MotoGP Warm Up will take place at 09:00 local time/AEDT.