MotoGP Bids Farewell to Phillip Island After 30 Years

Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix is the last MotoGP race at Phillip Island, and the paddock is treating it like a goodbye rather than a race weekend. Barring the two years lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, the seaside circuit south of Melbourne has been a fixture on the world championship calendar for 30 years, Reuters reports. The race moves to the streets of Adelaide in 2027. Before it goes, the island has a two-point title fight to settle and a storm to argue with.

What is ending at Phillip Island?

A circuit that has been part of the championship’s furniture since the late 1980s. Wayne Gardner won the first two world championship races held there, in 1989 and 1990. Mick Doohan sealed the fifth and final of his world titles at the island in 1998. Casey Stoner won six Australian Grands Prix in a row there from 2007 to 2012, a run no rider has matched at a home circuit in the modern era. Sections of the track are named for all three of them.

The farewell began before a wheel turned in practice. On Thursday, hundreds of local residents gathered at roadsides to greet the riders as they crossed the San Remo bridge onto the island on a processional ride to the track, Reuters records. The island’s combination of high-speed corners and fickle weather has produced drama for decades, and millions of fans have attended its race weekends. What is being given up is specific: that coastline, that wind, and a lap that rewards bravery in a way modern circuits are designed not to.

Why is the race leaving?

The contract ended, and the two sides could not agree on what came next. The 2026 race closes a long-term deal with the Victorian state government. The organisers, Dorna, pushed to move the grand prix to Albert Park in Melbourne, the Formula 1 venue closer to the city and its hotels. The two sides failed to reach agreement on renewing the contract, the Victorian government said in a statement that it had declined the Albert Park request, and the South Australian government stepped in to cut its own deal. From 2027 the race runs in Adelaide on MotoGP’s first street circuit.

The riders have not hidden where they stand. “Phillip Island is an extraordinary circuit. Racing here for the last time will be emotional,” said Marc Marquez, who has won five races at the circuit including four in MotoGP. “It is a track with a unique, breathtaking layout.” Last year’s winner Raul Fernandez said he would “cry a little” on the final weekend, and Stoner himself aimed at the hosts rather than the calendar, telling Melbourne’s Herald Sun that local organisers had not tried hard enough to keep the race or build a festival around it. How differently the two big series treat their classic venues is the subject of the comparison between MotoGP and Formula 1.

What is still to race for this weekend?

The championship, which is close enough to turn the farewell into a live title weekend. Aprilia rider Jorge Martin leads Marquez by two points, Reuters reports, so Saturday’s sprint matters as much as Sunday’s race and the lead can change hands twice before the circuit closes. Marquez sits near the top of the most MotoGP wins list and the most MotoGP championships table, and every point he takes off Martin this weekend lands in a title fight that will be decided at circuits other than this one from here on.

Jack Miller is the home crowd’s story. This is his final Australian Grand Prix before he leaves MotoGP at the end of the season, and he welcomed the forecast rain, a leveller at a circuit where the weather comes off the Bass Strait sideways. “Phillip Island’s giving itself a proper send-off,” he told reporters at the circuit on Thursday. “I’m not angry about that.” The field is already thinned by injury, as Toprak Razgatlioglu’s season-ending absence showed earlier this month, which makes the farewell start list shorter than the weekend deserved.

Will the storm move Sunday’s race?

It might, and there is a script for it. After a week of sunshine at the island, rain is forecast for qualifying on Saturday, and a storm may disrupt Sunday’s race, Reuters reports. Crash reports that the Bureau of Meteorology expects sunshine and strong winds for Friday, a 95 percent chance of showers on Saturday, and a 100 percent chance of heavy rain on Sunday, and that Fabio di Giannantonio revealed in his Thursday media debrief that discussions have taken place about alternatives to race in the best conditions possible. For now, Crash adds, the 2026 schedule remains unchanged: sprint on Saturday afternoon, grand prix at 2 PM local on Sunday.

The precedent is fresh. In 2023, facing gale warnings, organisers brought the main race forward to Saturday, swapping it with the sprint. The storm duly arrived on Sunday: warm-up and the Moto3 race went ahead in soaking conditions, the Moto2 race was stopped, and the MotoGP sprint was cancelled. A farewell race run a day early in horizontal rain would be a very Phillip Island ending, and the possibility stays live until the organisers say otherwise. This page will be updated if the schedule moves, and again when the last winner at the island is known.

What does the championship lose when Phillip Island goes?

A circuit the riders describe in terms usually saved for people. The layout has not been sanitised, the weather is a participant rather than a backdrop, and the lap rewards bravery in a way modern tracks are designed not to. Street circuits sell a city. Phillip Island sells a lap.

The Adelaide race may well succeed on its own terms, and a first street race is a genuine experiment for a championship built on permanent circuits. But the thing being given up is not replaceable by a successful event elsewhere. It is the specific combination of that coastline, that wind and those corner names, and after Sunday it exists only in the record books and the archive. Championships move races all the time. They rarely admit, as the riders did this week, that the sport itself gets smaller when one of them goes.