MotoGP Preview: How Silverstone proved it’s the perfect venue for Britain’s top motorcycle races

The World Road Motorcycle Championship will visit Silverstone, UK this weekend for the twelfth time in its modern era. And although it’s been thirteen years since the last MotoGP race at Donington Park, the circuit is still for many the true home of the British Grand Prix. Although many memorable moments in the sport’s history have taken place here, that doesn’t mean that Silverstone has somehow fallen behind.

Built on a former RAF airfield, the Silverstone circuit first hosted a World Road Motorcycle Championship race in 1977. So it took almost three decades after the track opened before the world’s fastest machines first raced on it.

Indeed, since the championship’s inception in 1949, the Isle of Man and its dangerous but breathtaking Tourist Trophy has been the British home of the World Championship. It wasn’t until a boycott by many of the leading riders, led by legend Giacomo Agostini, that the FIM changed the venue for the British Grand Prix.

While at this time Silverstone only hosted the F1 grand prix in odd years (in even years it was held at Brands Hatch), the motorcycle world championship returned to the circuit annually. That is, only until 1986. For the following year, a change came and the British Grand Prix moved to Donington Park. F1, on the other hand, was permanently based at Silverstone, unless you count the 1993 European Grand Prix, which was also held at Donington.

2009 brought mutual disgust for the communities of both motorsport’s top competitions. The decision was made that F1 and MotoGP would swap the venue of the British Grand Prix. The Queen of Motorsport would move to Donington Park and its motorcycle equivalent would return to Silverstone.

Both circuits were due for a significant track extension. Both Donington and Silverstone were to be lengthened by the addition of a stadium section in the middle of the circuit’s grounds.

However, the owners of Donington failed to even secure the necessary funds to begin construction, while their colleagues at Silverstone, on the other hand, saw all their plans come to fruition. So there were no changes to F1, just a slight change in the circuit’s appearance.

But MotoGP had already signed a five-year contract with Silverstone. So Donington lost both potential F1 and MotoGP races.

F1 fans breathed a sigh of relief when news broke of Silverstone signing a contract for another seventeen years. There were not many who initially welcomed F1’s move to Donington. However, in time, the vast majority would eventually get used to it. But the opposite could be applied to the MotoGP community, which has traditionally been less tolerant of change of any kind.

To this day, one can still hear the nostalgia-tinged memories (and the resulting opinions) of some MotoGP fans that Donington was a much better venue for the MotoGP World Championship. And it would be now.

That may well be true. It’s just that MotoGP has undergone a significant evolution over the last thirteen years. Not just in terms of the technical aspects of the sport, but also in terms of safety and the ever-increasing demands of hosting races. Donington is able to host the World Superbike Championship because the demands of the championship are incomparably lower than they are in MotoGP.

In addition, Silverstone boasts far greater facilities for teams and organisers and slightly more spectator opportunities. This alone results in it being undeniably more beneficial for the biggest and most famous motorcycle championship to hold races at circuits like Silverstone as opposed to more ‘home-grown’ tracks like Donington Park.

But at the same time, you can’t compare the quality of racing between two circuits like Silverstone and Donington. Unless they are run in the same year, no definitive conclusions can be drawn.

The fact that the memorable grand prix seasons of 2000 and 2009, for example, are still remembered today (premier class triumphs for Valentino Rossi and Andrea Dovizioso on a wet track) does not immediately suggest that no race of the modern era at Silverstone is even close to those at Donington.

And frankly, Silverstone hasn’t disappointed at all in the last few editions. Think back to the grandiose battle between Marc Márquez and Álex Rins three years ago. The 20-lap duel resulted in Rins winning by just thirteen thousandths of a second with a breathtaking manoeuvre at the last corner of Woodcote.

What about the 2015 edition and Valentino Rossi’s famous victory? Or perhaps one can single out the 2013 race, where Márquez also succumbed to his rival in the final corners of the race. Here it was Jorge Lorenzo, Márquez’s direct rival for the then championship title.

In short, we witnessed many breathtaking moments during the MotoGP races at Silverstone, just as we once did at Donington. However, when you consider that today’s World Motorcycle Series standards are sadly no longer met by ‘old-school’ circuits such as Donington Park, Silverstone is (whether people like it or not) the perfect, but unfortunately only, circuit suitable for MotoGP racing at the moment.

Source: MotoGP