Why MotoGP had 'no choice' but to abandon Phillip Island sprint

MotoGP race director Mike Webb has said that worsening wind at Phillip Island left organisers with no choice but to call off Sunday's postponed Australian Grand Prix sprint race.

Having already moved the sprint to Sunday and instead holding the main race of the weekend on Saturday in anticipation of bad weather, organisers abandoned efforts to hold the 13-lap race just half an hour before the scheduled start time of 1pm local time. It followed the earlier Moto2 race that was red-flagged after just nine of 23 laps were completed, with 10 of the 30 starters crashing in that time in the treacherous conditions.

'All the way through the day we were monitoring the steady wind and what the gusts peaked at, and that number slowly went up through the day. 'Having red-flagged the race for the wind, unless it got better there was no way we could start another race, and it didn't get better; it got worse.' Webb pinpointed Celestino Vietti's crash on the ninth lap of the Moto2 race as the moment where race direction realised that the wind had reached unsafe levels.

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