[kropotkin thinks...] - 2019 Austin Friday MotoGP Round UP: Poor Weather, Strong Wind

[Ninjette Newsbot]

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It never rains, but it pours. Especially around Austin, where warm damp air blows in from the Gulf of Mexico, and the rising terrain of the start of Hill Country generates turbulence which causes the towering clouds to dump their burden of moisture onto the earth below. That happened early on Saturday morning, when the heavens opened and a torrential rain drenched the ground, causing deep puddles and running streams throughout the area east of Austin which houses the Circuit of the Americas. And it happened again in the late morning, a brief but enormously intense dumped another centimeter or so of rain onto the track in the space of a quarter of an hour.

Both rainstorms were accompanied by thunder and lightning, which caused the most problems for the organizers. Lightning poses a significant danger, not just to anyone foolish enough to try to race a motorcycle in a thunderstorm, but to corner workers, the fans and the staff who work around the track. Lightning strikes regularly claim lives in Texas, so when a thunderstorm hits, it gets taken very seriously indeed.

It never rains but it pours in the metaphorical sense as well. After Friday's raft of complaints aimed at the bumpiness of the Austin track, Saturday started off with track action being first delayed, and then canceled, and fans being locked out of the circuit for safety reasons. It was very much an inauspicious start to the weekend.

No track time, no experience