Australian MotoGP great Wayne Gardner has unloaded on the Victorian government and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGP Corp) after Phillip Island was dropped from the MotoGP calendar, with the event set to move to an Adelaide street circuit from 2027. October’s Australian MotoGP will now be the 30th and final time the race is held at Phillip Island.
Although MotoGP made the final call, the 66-year-old says both Victorian authorities and the AGP Corp share responsibility for letting the iconic circuit slip away, and his anger boiled over when he was asked whether he’d take back his statue. “I might jam it up their arses actually.”
Gardner, who helped build the event and won its first two editions, told ABC Melbourne Breakfast he could see the writing on the wall. “I’m not surprised, I’ll be honest. This has been coming for some years, but I’m certainly not surprised,” he said. “The Victorian government, they have a reputation of winning, losing, disappearing, and then they come back, and then they go again — it’s just on and off. “It’s a disappointment. I never thought I’d see that happen after the success (of the race).”
He recalled how closely he worked on getting the modern Phillip Island event up and running, starting with a push to improve the surface. “Bob Barnard, he laid the circuit and he approached me, he said, ‘I’ll go and do this, I want to re-pave this track, but only if you’re involved, and you can lobby the government, you can do all the media and so on’.” Gardner said, “So, we worked together, just the two of us, to put that event on, and it was all off the back of when I was a world champion. “I’m sad and disappointed but I’m not surprised by the antics of the Victorian government and the AGP Corp.”
A Member of the Order of Australia for his contribution to MotoGP, Gardner says his relationship with organisers has soured in recent years, and he believes the state didn’t fight hard enough to keep the race at Phillip Island. “I noticed it coming about four years ago,” he said. “When Travis Auld got in (as AGPC CEO), they changed the board of the AGP office. “I was watching the changes, I noticed the spectators were getting disappointed because they started stripping the event of all the entertainment, not just on the track, but off-track; taking the shops away, the bike stores — they just cut it to pieces, and it was only a matter of time.”
Gardner says he never did it for money, but he also felt increasingly sidelined. “I’ve never got paid for this event at all, I’ve just done it out of the good of my heart, and obviously I went on to win the first two years, but I’m the blood and Bob and myself are the real people who put this together,” he said. “Bob got kicked out of all that, and (I did too), two years ago. They weren’t prepared to contribute to my travel funds from Europe. “They said they’d give me a free ticket in — whoopee. That’s it, a free ticket, that’s all they were going to offer. “In previous years, they paid for my travels and things like that, but this time, no, they were giving me nothing. “I don’t (need) free tickets, I get an honorary member pass to go to any grand prix anywhere in the world at any time, so why would I do that?”
He directly blamed Auld and division manager David Corrigan for what he described as a steady decline in the event’s atmosphere and value. “About four years ago, when Travis Auld and David Corrigan got in, they started stripping the place of all the entertainment,” Gardner said. “And can I tell you, all the motorcycle riders don’t want to go there because they don’t get good value out of it; they’re charging more money for the tickets, the local accommodation is horrendously expensive, and they just said, ‘What’s the point when they’ve taken away all the entertainment at the track?’ “They come to watch good racing, but they also want to go and have fun with each other in the shops and stalls and shows, and that was being cut back from about four or five years ago. “Everything changed when the new AGP board got in, and that’s when I’ve noticed the change. And then about two years after that, I could see that they started cutting people and bringing in teenagers to run the events and they were trying to cut costs as much as possible. “And then it came to me and they said, ‘We’re not offering you any money anymore, it’s your mandatory duty to come down and join the event’. I said, ‘But I live in Europe? I have to bring all my family over there, it’s hideous expensive, and I’m not doing that’, and they went, ‘Well, we’ll give you a free ticket and that’s it’.”
He also questioned the way his name is used at the circuit. “The main straight is called Gardner Straight after I had two huge victories there and got the event going, but there are also hospitality unit called Gardner Hospitality Units, and I don’t get one cent from the government or from the AGP Corp,” he said. “They’ve got my name splattered everywhere, which is an honour, but you would think they would get me down there to go and talk to people, but they’re just abusing my history there and they don’t want to pay for it.”
Beyond his own grievances, Gardner says fans have been telling him the on-ground experience is no longer worth the cost. “I’m disappointed and I’m sad to hear the bad news, and it’s just not right. They’ve done it all wrong,” he said. “All the spectators are telling me what’s going on and they’d rather spend their money and go fly up to Asia and get looked after up there. “This is the problem. I love the trophy, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just disappointing the atmosphere of the whole event. “It’s really sad, really sad. And I never thought this would happen.”
Fellow Australian champion Casey Stoner also challenged the decision, posting on Instagram: “MotoGP to take Phillip Island off the calendar!!!” He added, “One of the greatest Motorcycle circuits in the entire world that has produced some of the greatest and most entertaining races we have witnessed, and continues to do so year after year, is being pushed to the side in place of a race in Adelaide and supposedly a street circuit… “Why would MotoGP take possibly their best circuit off the calendar … I’ll let everyone decide.”
The shift follows a standoff over MotoGP’s push to move the Victorian round to Melbourne’s Albert Park, a change the Victorian government refused. Any move to Albert Park would likely have required significant alterations to meet MotoGP safety requirements, including expanded run-off areas. Victoria’s major events minister Steve Dimopoulos said, “The foreign private owners of the MotoGP have demanded that we move the MotoGP to Albert Park,” and added, “We said no. We were never willing to sell out Phillip Island.”
Phillip Island has hosted the race since 1997, after earlier events in 1989 and 1990, and the loss is expected to hit the local economy hard. A 10-year deal struck in 2016 was meant to support investment, but infrastructure did not keep pace with MotoGP’s expectations. As the deadlock dragged on, South Australia moved to secure the race, backing a return to an Adelaide street circuit—an approach with history, given Adelaide hosted the Formula One Australian Grand Prix on its streets from 1985 to 1995 before losing it to Melbourne’s Albert Park.