The 2018 British motorcycle Grand Prix was the scheduled twelfth round of the

2018 MotoGP season The 2018 FIM MotoGP World Championship was the premier class of the 70th F.I.M. Road Racing World Championship season. Marc Márquez entered the season as the reigning champion, with Repsol Honda being the reigning team champions and Honda th ...

. Planned to be held at the Silverstone Circuit in

Silverstone Silverstone is a village and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is about from Towcester on the former A43 main road, from the M1 motorway junction 15A and about from the M40 motorway junction 10, Northampton, Milton Keynes and B ...

on 26 August 2018, the race was cancelled due to heavy rain.This is the first cancelled MotoGP race since the cancellation of the MotoGP class race during the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix due to Marco Simoncelli's fatal accident, and also marks for the first time since the

1980 Austrian Grand Prix The 1980 Austrian Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held on 17 August 1980 at the Österreichring circuit in Austria. It was the tenth race of the 1980 Formula One season. The race was the 13th Austrian Grand Prix and the eleventh to be held ...

that racing for all classes was cancelled.

Qualifying

Qualifying was conducted on 25 August 2018, with

Jorge Lorenzo Jorge Lorenzo Guerrero (; born 4 May 1987) is a Spanish former professional motorcycle racer. He is a five-time World Champion, with three MotoGP World Championships (, and ) and two 250cc World Championships ( and ). After winning the 2006 ...

on a

Ducati Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A. () is the motorcycle-manufacturing division of Italian company Ducati, headquartered in Bologna, Italy. The company is directly owned by Italian automotive manufacturer Lamborghini, whose German parent company is A ...

taking the MotoGP pole with a time of 2:10.155.

Francesco Bagnaia Francesco "Pecco" Bagnaia (born 14 January 1997) is an Italian Grand Prix motorcycle racer competing in MotoGP for the Ducati Lenovo Team. He is the current MotoGP World Champion and a previous Moto2 World Champion. He is the first rider fr ...

scored the Moto2 pole at 2:08.153, and Jorge Martín in a Honda claimed the Moto3 pole at 2:13.292, all with inclement weather involved.

Track surface issues

On 9 February 2018, Silverstone Circuit announced the track would be repaved in its entirety for the first time since 1996. Shortly after the track was repaved and opened for testing,

Cal Crutchlow Cal Crutchlow (born 29 October 1985) is an English professional motorcycle racer who retired from regular competition after the 2020 season. He is contracted as a test rider for Yamaha Motor Racing, which he is expected to continue in 2022 and 2 ...

said the new surface was perfect to Dorna officials. Five months later, during the Formula One round at Silverstone in early July,

Lewis Hamilton Sir Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton (born 7 January 1985) is a British racing driver currently competing in Formula One for Mercedes. In Formula One, Hamilton has won a joint-record seven World Drivers' Championship titles (tied with Mic ...

blasted the repaving as "wasted money," calling it the "worst job ever," saying the rough surface was worse than the

Nürburgring The is a 150,000 person capacity motorsports complex located in the town of Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It features a Grand Prix race track built in 1984, and a long "North loop" track, built in the 1920s, around the village a ...

Nordschleife.

Carlos Sainz, Jr. Carlos Sainz Vázquez de Castro (; born 1 September 1994), otherwise known as Carlos Sainz Jr. or simply Carlos Sainz, is a Spanish racing driver currently competing in Formula One for Scuderia Ferrari. He is the son of Carlos Sainz Sr., a ...

said the roughness of the surface, especially bumps, were worse after the repaving. Shortly after the cancellation, MotoGP officials blamed the track's newly repaved surface as the problem. Media reports from various motorsport sites noted the problems since the

F1 race is a racing video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Famicom in 1984. A version was released in 1990 for the Game Boy in Japan and in 1991 in Europe and North America, including the Four Player Adapter for four-pl ...

and the new tarmac was to blame. On 8 May 2019, Silverstone announced as part of extending its MotoGP contract to 2021 that the circuit will be repaved again in June, two months before the MotoGP race. The repaving was completed by Tarmac Ltd with the direction of Italian circuit designer Jarno Zaffelli, from Dromo.

Championship standings after the race

MotoGP

Moto2

Moto3

References

{{MotoGP 2010–19 British Motorcycle Grand Prix British motorcycle Grand Prix

British motorcycle Grand Prix The British motorcycle Grand Prix is a motorcycling event that is part of the Grand Prix motorcycle racing season. History Before 1977, the only British round was the Isle of Man TT, which was part of the FIM championship from its inaugurati ...

Motorcycle racing controversies