shals and officials.
At the outwardly spick-and-
span Buddh circuit outside New
Delhi, most of the concerns
seem to have been put to rest.
If the delay—blamed on the
absence of marshals and race
officials from their posts—is
the worst thing that happens all
weekend, it will be a major relief.
Teething problems included
just getting there.
Two days before practice,
Marc Marquez was the highest-
profile rider still without a visa,
unable to travel. Others, includ
-
ing several team staff and jour-
nalists, had been turned away
from
their scheduled flights
because of visa delays.
In the end, all the riders did
make it, if (in the case of Mar
-
quez, Brad Binder and Jake
Dixon)
only just.
Something else that was
cut very fine was perhaps even
more important—the critical
process of track homologa
-
tion, which principally concerns
acceptable run-off and other
safety provisions.
And without
which, the riders would not even
H
as Dorna got away with
it again? Writing this
after opening practices
for the first Indian GP, it looks
that way. After an increasingly
fraught run-up to the latest ad-
dition in Dorna's headlong push
towards
globalization, the first
day proceeded with only one
major hitch—an inconsequential
45-minute delay triggered by
miscommunication with mar-
P138
CN II IN THE PADDOCK
BY MICHAEL SCOTT
BUDDH DODGES
THE BULLET
Not without some
glitches, the first Indian
MotoGP is off to an
optimistic start.
