By Marcella Gallace
In MotoGP, racing is an art, and so too is the logistics of a sport that sees more than 350,000 kilograms of equipment moved from race to race.
Logistics becomes particularly challenging for races scheduled outside of Europe, swapping team trucks for airfreight crates. Packing time frames become tighter, cubic metres of storage are limited, team budgets are challenged, that old friend called jet lag joins the crew and familiarity becomes foreign.
This occurs for almost half of the races on the MotoGP calendar with eight of 20 races in 2022 scheduled across Asia, the Americas, and Australia.
For these races, the movement of equipment falls into the hands of Dorna Sports, who are responsible for transporting each team’s garage of contents with global logistics company DHL. It takes four Boeing 747 jumbo jets packed to the brim to transport MotoGP from one continent to another.
According to DHL, this flight package involves over 850 individual pieces. That includes the BMW M5 Safety Car, helmets, racing gear, electronics, broadcasting equipment, promotional banners, merchandise, pit crew equipment, the bikes across each class, and 200 litres of engine oil required to fuel the mechanical beasts.
And they only have a few days, or sometimes, hours to transport it all.
Each MotoGP team is given 8,750kg of paid airfreight by Dorna Sports. Teams’ strategise about what they will transport, leave behind or rent in the country of destination, as they are responsible for paying for anything that exceeds the weight limit. This has become increasingly vital for team budgets as international airfreight costs have dramatically elevated by 59% since COVID hit in 2020.
MotoGP team LCR Honda talks us through their logistical moves outside of Europe. “We pack 35 crates, which is a total of 9,500kg to 10,000kg,” the team’s Executive Director, Fabio Alberti explains. Each team has four MotoGP bikes, at a weight of 160kg each, every team loses 640kg alone just in bike weight. Add the leathers, helmets, tyres and every other piece of equipment you need to build a racing garage and office space, and you can imagine how quickly the kilos start to pile on.
Additional airfreight weight costs each team tens of thousands of dollars with an extra
1,000kg costing a team excess of $50,000AUD.
“Last transfer to Australia was about 9,300kg, because we transported about 300kg on wheels from Thailand to Malaysia…We did not send the Nakagami crate to Australia as he was not riding and [we didn’t send a] few broken parts [to Australia]. That move made us save about €10,000 ($16,000 AUD),” Fabio explains.
It becomes clear that it is more feasible for teams to rent certain equipment rather than transport it over. “We usually rent all the vehicles locally, scooters for the circuit, office equipment, and buy cleaning materials. In some locations in the world, we buy [items] locally and then place them into rented storage. For example, fridges in Argentina or power transformers in the USA.”
Despite teams not having the comfort of their trucks for these races, all the equipment is packed and moved in the same order, “same tool disposal, tools drawers, same tyre stands,” Fabio explains. This allows the mechanics to retain muscle memory and to move around the garage in the same fashion as they would in the European garages.
Teams usually bump in on the Wednesday prior to the race, unlike in Europe, where tech trucks are allowed to enter and park on a Monday. It’s a tight turnover and procrastination is not an option in this world. Once teams are given the greenlight to enter, they move swiftly onto the circuit and get to work. For LCR Honda, it’s all hands-on deck, with 14 team members helping unpack crates. Setup time is dependent on the location with some circuits boasting bigger garage spaces than others. Australia’s Phillip Island is on the smaller side and assembling a garage on the Island can resemble “Tetris” a bit, taking three to four hours.
DHL are responsible for the entire operation from the moment the crates are packed by a team and ready to depart the circuit. Of course, the crates need to be cleared through customs when they reach the airport, which usually does not pose an issue for teams.
However, LCR Honda ran into a bit of an issue in Thailand this year when they attempted to import a normal motorbike into the Thailand Grand Prix. After being asked to pay 100% of the motorbike value by Thai Customs, despite being a temporary importation, the team had no choice other than to send the motorbike back home.
For teams, the biggest difference between the European circuits and those outside of Europe is hospitality. In fact, LCR Honda have one more hospitality truck than tech. But the hospitality crew becomes temporarily abandoned when teams take off for Asia, the Americas, and Australia. “In Europe, we have hospitality and [outside of Europe] we do not. So, we do not have a special place to host the guests or to have lunch.”
The hospitality unit is an intriguing aspect of MotoGP, which can take a team like LCR Honda eight to 10 hours to dismantle. A back-to-back race in Europe will see the hospitality team immediately start packing once the race has finished, working late into the evening. The hospitality trucks will depart early Monday for the following country, where teams will “park the trucks and fly back home.”
In MotoGP, speed and accuracy are not only required on the track but in every aspect behind the scenes.