MotoGPValentin Khorounzhiy, Simon Patterson
22 Mar 2026 — 4 min read
MotoGP riders have shed some more light on the sudden shortening of the Brazilian Grand Prix at Goiania due to track damage.
The grand prix at Goiania - the second (after the sprint on Saturday) premier-class race at the venue in nearly 40 years - was due to run over 31 laps but was suddenly reduced to 23 just minutes before the start.
The culprit was the surface apparently breaking up in the Turns 11-12 sequence of right-handers, as noted by multiple riders as they completed their sighting laps to the grid.
Marc Marquez (Ducati) and Joan Mir (Honda) were among those to report this.
"I went on the warm-up lap and I thought that somebody had driven a truck over there or something, like, put mud across or something - because it was a different colour!" recalled KTM rider Brad Binder. "I thought it was weird.
"Then when they said something on the grid, I thought 'OK, well, that's the reason'. And when I was behind all the bikes, it was looking like a little stone festival there. Just stones shooting out all over the place."
Multiple riders got pelted by stones in that area, with Enea Bastianini taking a painful hit to the shoulder, Mir getting "a big one" to the knee and Yamaha rider Alex Rins ending up with a considerably swollen index finger on his right hand.
"F***in' getting roostered the whole time! I was dead last so I was copping all the rocks. Yeah. It was a lot of asphalt coming out," said Pramac Yamaha rider Jack Miller, whose team-mate Toprak Razgatlioglu turned up at his media debrief brandishing lumps of asphalt he’d removed from inside his racing boot (pictured below).
Multiple riders recalled the 2022 occasion of the Indonesian Grand Prix return, when the race was cut from 27 laps to 20 - likewise due to track deterioration seemingly due to extreme heat.
By and large, riders - even those pelted with stones - were satisfied with the distance reduction as a sufficient safety measure. Nobody crashed in that area of the track in the end - though Marc Marquez came very close, surrendering a podium finish as a result.
"It's true that, if you touch that point, that was the racing line, it was super slippery," Marquez said. "And on that lap I touched a little bit that point, I lost the front and then I went to the kerb.
"I decided on the kerb not to lean a lot, and I knew that Diggia [Fabio Di Giannantonio] was close and he will overtake me. But better fourth place than a crash."
But Marquez took responsibility for the near-crash and felt conditions had been acceptable. His brother Alex was more of a dissenting voice.
"Quite unacceptable the conditions that we had today, honestly speaking," he said.
"I think they will need to resurface everything."
Remarkably, the actual manner of the restart seemed to prove more controversial than the fact itself of racing on a deteriorating surface.
The information about the reduced race distance came minutes before the start, with no delay to allow teams to react. Many will have presumably entertained a switch from the medium rear to the faster but less durable soft rear - and, indeed, KTM rider Pedro Acosta confirmed it was a choice he'd made with knowledge of the new race distance.
Alex Marquez didn't switch but too admitted he'd known early enough, saying: "I think it would have been better to do a ‘start delayed’ and then everyone would be able to prepare in the same time or change the tyres."
"Maybe the guys at the front of the grid got the information a bit earlier. But when I was lining up on the last row, we were the last ones to hear it. By the time we got it, there's no time to change," mused Binder.
His KTM stablemate Bastianini was much more irritated.
"It was a s**t. It was a s**t. Because, in a world championship - it's a big mistake. The message to the teams arrived at the end during the last minute. We had no time to change the tyres.
"The team told me 'we don't have time to change' - but the other riders in front of me, they changed the tyre!
"The good choice was to wait five minutes, to wait for the situation to be clear to all the riders.
"I saw many [organisational] issues during that weekend like this, and, well, I think nothing changes. We talk but nothing changes.”
