The barrage of criticism that Austin has garnered for the unique location of the circuit

USA In 2013, it had three MotoGP Grand Prix on its land, Laguna Seca, Indianapolis and this is the year in which Austin premiered, but none of these events were exempt from the criticism of Friday’s safety commissions where motorcycle riders are heard. Laguna Seca, named after the United States GP, was dropped from the 2014 calendar and Indianapolis from the 2016 calendar. Only Austin remains as the North American quota, but is always bordered on ‘exclusion’ due to controversies surrounding the terrain on which the race is based.hint.

Since Liberty Media took the reins of Formula One The United States has become an important market and currently has three events on the calendar, Miami, Austin and Las Vegas and only the Texan is a permanent circuit. On April 1, Liberty Media announced the acquisition of MotoGP, acquiring 86% of Dorna, although Carmelo Ezpeleta will retain his position as CEO and head of his current team.

The only hope is that after such acquisition the United States will once again strengthen its presence in the two-wheeled World Championship. There is already an American team in MotoGP, the Trackhouse Racing Aprilia customer since 2024, the second place in the Moto2 World Championship Joe Roberts He is applying as a driver for the star category, but the circuit issue continues to be a headache and worst of all there is no viable alternative at the moment.

Since 2015, the Safety Commission has not stopped criticizing Austin’s COTA, a circuit that since 2012 has also hosted F1 without interruption. It is well known that the high-speed curves in circuits shared by the same GGPP are the ones that usually present the greatest problems.

But the big problem is that the route is built in the eastern area of ​​the capital of the state of Texas, which has one of the most plastic soils in the entire state. That is, a soil that tends to expand when it is wet and shrink when it dries. And some serious floods in 2015, which overflowed the drainage pipes installed in the swampy ground of the circuit, only made the situation worse.

And it was not a small problem in its construction because pits of about three meters had to be made where the water barriers were placed and covered with gravel. A solution that can be effective, but does not guarantee a solution to Austin’s roughness problem, as before.

In April 2019 Aleix Espargaro, one of the most belligerent, exclaimed that “the circuit is in very dangerous conditions because of the potholes, I’ve never ridden a circuit like this. It’s not at the level that MotoGP demands and I don’t think we can race another year in these conditions, out of shape”. And when F1 landed in November, the drivers of the ‘Great Circus’ came under fire when it broke down in one of the pits. Sebastian Vettel the suspension of his Ferrari.

The response was to close the facility that winter to proceed with a major renovation in which pipes damaged in the 2015 flood were removed, and caused erosion that left cracks and holes throughout the backstretch, the pit exit and part of the first curve, becoming 9 and 10 and from 12 to 19. On the return in 2021 after the pandemic, the pits were redone and the unrepaired area – between 2 and 10 – cracked . In the Safety Commission there were two or three drivers who almost gave up and didn’t race on Sunday. And that’s when Dorna had to issue an ultimatum to the organization.

The problem was that with so many partial remodelings the track had four different asphalts and in curves like 11 and 12, 15 and 20 the problems reappeared and the asphalt cracked again. For single-seaters a solution may have been found, but for motorcycles it is still an unsolved problem.

And a fact that still disturbs: From 2021, the organizers stopped giving official numbers of viewers at the Grand Prix of the Americas. The last ones given in 2019: 47,466 on Sunday and 120,545 on the weekend.