Well, who could've predicted that canceling a race due to catastrophic flooding—only after being seriously pressured to do so by MotoGP's top riders—and then selecting a racetrack only a short distance away from said flooding, a racetrack that was set to be besieged by the very same flooding as told by meteorologists would've, you know, been a bad idea?!
Who I ask? WHO?!
Well, I can tell you who didn't, and that's MotoGP's Carlos Ezpeleta. He's the series' boss, who failed to see that holding a race in what's essentially a disaster zone, where more weather was already pushing in, the same weather that has decimated Valencia, would then affect Barcelona, the recently-designated backup track for MotoGP's season finale. Great job, Carlos! Brilliant move.
As RideApart's own Robbie Bacon eloquently stated in Slack, "Fans will now have the choice of flying into one of two underwater airports!" And he's being serious, as Barcelona's airport is currently sitting underwater, while trains, buses, and more infrastructure have been shut down due to rising flood waters. Planes have also been diverted and flights canceled.
Again, who could've seen this coming?
Honestly, this is the dumbest fiasco I've witnessed in a long time because, as mentioned in my original article, MotoGP could've gone anywhere to hold the season's finale. They could've stayed in Malaysia and held a doubleheader. They could've waited a few weeks and held a joint doubleheader with Formula 1, as they're now both under Liberty Media's ownership. They could've literally gone anywhere in continental Europe. Literally anywhere else!
But no, Ezpeleta, in all his wisdom, decided to go a few hundred kilometers up the coast in Spain, the same coast Valencia sits on, and hold the finale in Barcelona. Which, again, is now also underwater.
It's not like he didn't have access to these weather reports either. It's not like he didn't see that Spain's king and queen and prime minister got pelted by dirt and food by the Valencian locals who are rightfully pissed off. I mean, he has the internet, right? He lives in this century where weather reports are fairly accurate? He has eyes and ears and can process words above a third-grade level, right? I'd understand this decision more if he couldn't.
But he runs a billion-dollar racing series. One that's already put races on the calendar, canceled them, put them back on, canceled them again, then put on different ones, only to cancel those until 2026. Doesn't seem all that difficult to swap races or tracks or countries around to me.
But what do I know? I only predicted this would be a terrible idea...
