[kropotkin thinks...] - 2018 Phillip Island MotoGP Preview: Why Phillip Island Is Dif

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Race tracks come in all different shapes and sizes, from tight and twisty to wide and sprawling, from slow and ornery to fast and furious. There are boring tracks, adequate tracks, and great tracks. And then there's Phillip Island.

What makes Phillip Island special? A lot of things. Its location, perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Bass Strait, with nothing but a couple of hundred kilometers of open water fed by the Arctic Ocean between it and Tasmania. The layout, virtually unchanged for decades, which hugs the rolling hills of the Island and flows up and down. The speed: there are only really two places you brake, at Honda Corner and at MG, the rest of the time you're either accelerating, or rolling off before carrying momentum through the turns. The corners: sensuous, flowing curves without sharply delineated corners or straight lines. Peter Paul Rubens, not Pablo Picasso. A track drawn with a pencil, not a computer mouse.