Motor Sports are keeping me busy.

It been a busy time for Sportsnet Holidays favorite friends “petrol heads” of all kinds. The Bathurst 1000 has been a sold out success for us 2010. This year’s Malaysian MotoGP at Sepang was our best to date, then we sold out our Philip Island MotoGP offer and to top it off the good weather turned up and Casey burned up the track in his come back on home soil. This weekend was the Gold Coast V8 Supercars or is it the NitroGP or Surfers Paradise V8s or maybe it’s the Queensland A1GP or the Gold Coast Indy 300? Email me if you can work it out. I was offered a spot on a boat moored just off the start/finish line by my good mate John at CruiseawayHolidays.com.au but I didn’t take it (kids cricket match) as it turned out this weekend as far as thrills and spills goes was a cracker and I am kicking myself. Putting aside our flurry of last min Derby Day Packages and the 2010 Australian Open Tennis, we have Clipsal 500 out for next year, we have the Townsville 400 up which was a sell out for us last year and we have just made a big booking for the Hamilton 400 V8 in NZ today (AB take a bow). For those who like their open wheel racing and still feel let down by the whole A1GP farrago our Melbourne Grand Prix packages are getting a bit of traction so don’t spend too long thinking about it. While I can’t promise the Gold Coast grid girls or the Surfers Paradise beach front I reckon this year’s evening race format for the 2010 Australian Grand Prix will be a scorcher.

Spring into action

September always heralds a period of madness in the sports travel business as it means we literally spring into action and it rarely pauses until after the Australian F1 Grand Prix in late summer.

September means footy finals and we have huge numbers for the AFL Grand Final packages and NRL Grand Final packages. There are a few late nights coming up with last minute bookings as fans realize their team is going to get there and as we assemble hundreds of travel packs with grand final tickets, hotels documents and various other goodies while organizing our Sportsnet functions and speakers.

As that one day in September (or early October) passed for both codes there is no time to take a breather as hard on the heels of footy is the Philip Island Moto GP event and the Bathurst V8 races. Both events have something challenging in common for a sports travel company. They are in the country; there is limited accommodation and huge demand. We had booked out most of our top flight accommodation in and around both events months ago. No matter how hard you want to please the fans, at this time of year you are either staying up in Melbourne and transferring down to the track or looking at dorm accommodation around Bathurst for the Mount Panorama races. That all said it never seems to distract the fans from the enjoying what they really came for the sights, sounds and smell of motor sports.

“Oh to be in England” (well Britain actually), it is not often that you will hear anyone who lives in the beautiful Melbourne saying, “oh to be in England” but if you are a sports fan and a traveller you can’t help looking enviously at the British summer of sport. They have Formula One drivers taking pole position and winning F1 meets. They have had a compelling Wimbledon Tennis Tournament with their own man Andy Murray nearly going the distance. They have the Ashes which is shaping up to be a sensational final match with plenty of grudge and controversy,that’s the way we like it. The British Open Championship Golf has been on and the course looks like it has been cut out of picture book, sophisticated magnificent & lush. As if that is not all their man Cavendish has been tearing up the sprints in the Tour De France and grabbing the headlines. Even on the bikes the three cylinder Triumph is ripping it up on the track. To make matters worse we Aussies have gone down to the Kiwis in the Bledislow Cup when even the UK Lions have managed a few wins. If you are still up for a bit of self torture the EPL is on this weekend.

So what is the good news? Summers is just around the corner and I live in Melbourne and let me tell you it does not get any better than this in a single city of just over 3 million! We have: the Phillip Island Moto GP, the Australian Masters Golf in Melbourne the Tour Down Under with Lance Armstrong and a host of Aussies cyclists, The Australian Open and the soon to be announced dates for the Australian Grand Prix. If I had a friend called Willis I’d be tempted to say, “That’s what I am talking about!”

2009 Moto GP travel

You either like bikes or you don't, if you do like bikes then is it road bikes or dirt bikes, if it is road bikes you probably have a specific preference for a brand, a style, an era and so on. Bike people are pretty difficult to pin down. So for all my fellow bike fans out there this post is about travelling to the Moto GP. We send people to events all around the world on a request basis but in the case of Malaysia and Australia we organise the "full monty" an end to end package with; hotels, transfers, track access and a function ( Wayne Gardner at Phillip Island this year).

We do the Phillip Island bikes because it is in Australia, it is in our state and we love it. The Malaysian Moto GP we do because every year as we get more requests for this event than we do for Hungary or any of the big Spanish GP events.

The thing I think that makes the GP event so interesting for the traveller is that like the V8 Supercars you can get on a similar machine to the bikes you are following, you can ride the track at Phillip Island, buy the gear and have a real sense of the event or the race. With F1 and other events I dont get to feel so close to the actual event experience. You don't get to feel like Jesen Button on the street in your 2004 Celica but being on the open road on your Aprilla is another matter.

I am of course forgetting the fans you gotta love your Moto GP fan. The events have a sort of out door music festival buzz about them except that everyone is eyeing off everyone else's gear & bikes in the parking area.