With the MotoGP World Championship standings on a knife-edge ahead of the British GP, we calculated the huge logistical efforts behind a team as they travel the globe...
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Four races in a month – Great Britain (June 20), Netherlands (June 26), Catalunya (July 4) and Germany (July 18) – mean that the 10 teams in MotoGP will be busy bees. So many of the season’s races so close together require their support efforts to be redoubled. Repsol Honda hospitality employs an extra five people for their extra-popular home races like Catalunya alone. And thanks to the Eyjafjallajökull volcano ash cloud (only an Icelandic geographical feature could put 16 letters in such an unpronouncable order) spouting 250 million cubic metres of ash 9km (30,000ft) up into the European atmosphere, we also still have the delayed GP at Motegi in Japan to squeeze in during October because no one could fly out of Europe in April. Considering the density of ash particles thought to endanger aeroplanes’ jet engines is only 4mg (that’s 1/250th of a gram) per cubic metre of air, we think this is a bit annoying.
57,000...
Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso’s Honda RC212V bikes only weigh about 150kg each and could probably fit easily into your front room (size-wise, we mean – their bright orange colour scheme probably wouldn’t match your curtains). What a pity for MotoGP truckies that bikes are the least of their worries. Repsol Honda have two huge trailers – one for cargo and another for the hospitality centre – that weigh 35,000kg and 22,000kg respectively. That’s 57 tonnes in total. The motorhome, when constructed, is 10.5m x 8m (34.5ft x 26ft). That’s a big living room to transport around the world, and no mistake.
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What’s more, your average MotoGP motorhome doesn’t serve up muddy coffee and inexpertly-fried bacon like some kind of roadside truckers’ refuge. There are six full-on services in the Repsol motorhome every race weekend – breakfast and lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday – the popular Spanish stops for the energy firm’s home races attracting 180 diners for lunch on Saturday alone. Just an average lunch is for 100 people, over four shifts, with 42 diners able to eat at any one time while 50 other punters prop up the bar. No wonder that one massive refrigerated container and one large freezer are needed. Do you know how much free food people will eat? Well, exactly.
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Spare a thought for the average family truckie. Logistics staff will spend 96 days on average away from home during the 2010 season. A half of this – 48 days – will be spent on the road or in the air. On returning from a GP, most truckies will spend 90 per cent of the first 72 hours asleep, with only one hour a day out of bed to eat, use the toilet and help their kids with their homework. Actually, we made that last sentence up, but you get the point.
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There will be a little bit more room in Fiat Yamaha’s trucks for the time being, with only one bike. Jorge Lorenzo is fighting the fight without injured team-mate Valentino Rossi, and showed an unusual solidarity with Vale in Italy once the Italian was safely off the scene (for an estimated five months while the six-time champion’s broken leg heals). Future GPs could see a temporary replacement in the works outfit from Yamaha customer team Tech 3’s two riders (either Colin Edwards or Ben Spies), but for now the Fiat Yamaha logistics manager can leave the anti-espionage curtain dividing the two halves of the garage at home while Jorge focuses on fighting his countryman (and another rider he’s said not to be too in love with), one Daniel Pedrosa.
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Pedrosa’s RC212V has just a 21-litre fuel tank, easily enough for 20 laps of the 5.99km (3.66-mile) Silverstone circuit, but it’s as well that his Honda team are sponsored by a fuel company. A transportation truck’s average fuel consumption is an eye-watering 35 litres per 100km, or 8mpg. With 5,500km (3,400 miles) of tarmac to cover for the next four races, that's a staggering 1,925 litres (423 imperial gallons) per truck, or 3,850 litres in total. They have one support car as well, though we imagine that’s something a little more modest to run. The words ‘carbon’ and ‘offset’ spring to mind, so it’s as well that Repsol are at the forefront of developing sustainable and renewable energies as well. Otherwise, that’s a lot of tree-planting.
Eat up the kilometres on our MotoGP British Grand Prix event page
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