Breaking down the reality of the Adelaide MotoGP

Forget the hysteria, here are the facts

Forget the hype surrounding how Adelaide has stolen the MotoGP from Victoria and it will be held on a street circuit.

Forget that this is a dangerous rabbit hole that MotoGP is about to disappear into that consists of concrete canyons inviting certain injury and death.

The announcement today that Australia’s MotoGP round will remain in Australia (and not be poached by several cashed up Asian-Pacific rivals) is great news.

The announcement that it will be transferred to the centre of a major city is even greater news.

The announcement that it will be held on a street circuit is sort-of-true but also not really true.

The one person who stood up today at the official announcement and put it into perspective was Jack Miller.

As if he doesn’t have enough on his agenda in the next few weeks as the only rider who brings his V4 experience on MotoGP bikes to Yamaha as they roll out an experimental bike to competition within a few days of the opening round of season 2026, he appeared at the launch of the biggest change in MotoGP for Australian fans since it first hosted the 500cc GP last century.

He spoke honestly and in a way that anyone with a knowledge of motorcycle racing will instantly understand.

Let me put this into perspective.

We are now well into the new century of motorcycle racing and within the last year MotoGP has been taken over by people who want to grow the fan base like they have F1 cars. Like them or loathe them, Liberty had applied the same marketing skills to F1 as is applied to mainstream sports such as football, baseball and other boring ball sports such as cricket and basketball (apologies to anyone I offend as I only live for two wheels turning around and around and find this quite fascinating). But this strategy of sports promotion gets younger generations interested in any sport and its stars.

Let’s go back to the Adelaide round of F1 car racing last century, way back to the mid-1980s. An unlikely bid to get F1 cars into an Australian city, let alone a dedicated racetrack, it soon became a family-friendly party the whole city embraced. Being the final round sometimes meant the title was already decided but it also threw up controversy and you only have to watch the documentary Senna to see what could play out on a street circuit with motor racing’s most volatile stars. So the timing of having the MotoGP round within two weeks of the Supercars decider (which the current state government revived) makes emotional sense to add to the financial wisdom regarding set-up and running costs.

But the reality is the 2027 round of MotoGP in Australia isn’t going to be held on a dedicated street circuit.

It will involve loosely following large sections of the old Adelaide F1 circuit that will also sweep through the city’s elegant parklands. It was that panoramic parklands vision everyone watching F1 coverage on television (pre internet streaming) last century saw that inspired people to jump on a plane from Europe and be a part of, and maybe rub shoulders with stars like F1-loving George Harrison.

So, is it a street circuit?

Jack Miller summed it up for motorcyclists when he said quite bluntly today that it wasn’t really a street circuit. He went into quite involved detail about the calculations everyone involved in the negotiations had brought to the table, even down to the size of the stones in the run-off areas.

He then made a major statement that to me summed up the whole point of why this round will be held in SA. He said people can spend up to $6-7K getting to Phillip Island, paying for accommodation, entry fees etc. He had experienced this with his family in the early days of his career as a wannabe MotoGP rider.

For a multi-millionaire like Jack Miller to bring it all down to thousands of dollars speaks volumes as to why what seems like a crazy idea could, and probably will, work.

So MotoGP goes to the streets, but it’s not really a street circuit like the Isle of Man and Macau but a case of the track being within walking distance of a major city centre. So you can’t compare the proposed circuit to the Isle of Man TT track or Macau.

The real blueprint that has been revealed today has been summed up by Jack Miller. Make MotoGP more accessible to fans. I bet he wishes Townsville, his hometown, was the size of Adelaide.

But two big challenges remain: Create the circuit in time; and make it so it can be transformed into a night circuit to meet Euro television audiences.

The only time the full Adelaide F1 circuit hosted a night meeting was for the Race of a Thousand Years, a round of the American Le Mans endurance car series on 31 December 2000. That turned into a series of court cases and most people I spoke to years after the event (I was editor of the official program after editing seven of the first 10 V8 Supercars official programs) told me “no one came out of that feeling good”.

This time bigger forces are in play to make the future of MotoGP remain in Australia.

But how will it all work out? And is there a Plan B if the huge effort to create this parkland track in time can’t be achieved? And what about the 40 ancient gum trees that need to be chainsawed out to make way for the riders? And what about The Bend motorsport park? Let us know what you think.