VOL. 55 ISSUE 34 AUGUST 28, 2018 P65
be seeking compensation from
Aggregate Industries.
Pringle said that the aborted
plan to run the races had been
arrived at along with all interested
parties, including Dorna, Race
Direction and the teams.
Consultation with both the
official Met Office and a commer-
cial-grade weather-radar platform
had suggested that running the
races early would avoid the worst
of the weather, and that there
would be a good chance of run-
ning a full program of races.
"But that weather window
didn't happen," Pringle said. "If
I had known then what I know
now, I would have cancelled the
meeting on Saturday night," he
continued, apologising to fans
who had "sat for six hours in the
worst of British weather."
There had still been hopes of
running some races later in the
afternoon, and a meeting was
boasts of "unsurpassed techni-
cal knowledge," and which has
surfaced Silverstone in the past.
Aggregate Industries is a major
company with an impressive
portfolio, including major British
motorway work, the Mersey and
Channel Tunnels, and work also
on The Shard, London's tallest
structure.
However, Silverstone's resur-
face showed major shortcomings.
Stuart Pringle pops,
MotoGP stops
Silverstone MD Stuart Pringle
opened an impromptu press
briefing on Sunday evening with
a fulsome apology to the specta-
tors, and a promise that, "we will
be in contact with all the fans,"
who had booked in advance in
the coming days.
But he would not give any
details of any planned compen-
sation, nor whether he would
Shoddy workman-
ship to blame?
The main culprit for ruining the
British MotoGP was a resurfac-
ing job that turned out to be
laughably inadequate in the rain.
It wasn't just a matter of poor
drainage, as has been seen in
Malaysia and at Motegi, but poor
profiling as well—with the track
actually pooling water at some
areas where there were dips in
the surface.
One of these was on the entry
to Turn 7, at the end of the Hangar
Straight, where the multi-bike pile-
up happened in FP4 on Saturday,
and even more so at a bigger dip
before the next corner.
This was confirmed by Race
Director Mike Webb, in an
impromptu press briefing on
Saturday evening, and again on
Sunday.
"The problem is not water
running onto the track but that
it actually collects water, and it
doesn't run off," he said. The
track became unsafe in very
heavy rain, or after "a couple of
hours" of steady rain.
One problem is changes in
the camber and profiling com-
pared with the previous surface,
which was replaced after grow-
ing complaints about increasing
bumpiness, as well as dislike of a
mixture of several different types
of asphalt from previous patching.
The full 3.66-mile lap, the
longest on the calendar, was
resurfaced in February by a
British company called Aggre-
gate Industries, whose website
Valentino Rossi
was steadfast in his
desire not to race.
