1st MotoGP under lights for 2008

Lovers of fireworks and MotoGP will be rubbing their hands together as the first ever premier class race to be run at night will kick off the 2008 season at the Losail circuit in Qatar on March 9th.

Testing by a handful of factory riders, on admittedly sports road bikes and not their 800cc race machines, was held at 7:30 pm local time and was by all reports unanimously successful.

According to the most experienced rider on the (still only partially) floodlit track, Loris Capirossi, “The lighting is perfect out there! There’s hardly any difference between day and night riding in these conditions, and of course it’s going to be more exciting to race at night. There’s no problems with shadows or
reflections, I’m very happy with this.”

Keeping Loris company in his new Suzuki leathers were Marco Melandri (Ducati), James Toseland (Yamaha), Anthony West (Kawasaki) and Alex de Angelis (Honda). They all seemed to think that hitting nearly 300kmh on the showroom bikes was a good enough indication of race pace to make up their minds.

And in keeping with the tried and true method of getting things done in a sports-mad country where money is no object (and an F1 circuit can materialise in only 12 months from a patch of sand dunes), US based Musco Lighting President Joe Crookham remarked, “Our team have worked very hard to get this test going in just 65 days. Tonight we had the first part of the circuit fully lit, and we aim to complete the rest of the project by early February. It is the biggest project we have ever undertaken, but we are confident that everything will be as successful as this first test.”

This historic night race comes as a precursor to the F1 news of the first F1GP to be run under lights on the streets of Singapore in October 2008. It seems several hundred million European TV remote controls now have the power to set race schedules live in prime-time.