Having a Civic Type R pitted against Jack Miller's satellite MotoGP Honda motorcycle sounds interesting, to say the least. Throwing in a touring car was a tad superfluous if you ask me, but having everything filmed with 360-degree cameras turned out to yield a nice result.
However, I hoped that this would be a more serious race-like event with a much lesser show-off factor. It just wasn't meant to be, at least not this time, and it's a pity.
Each time MotoGP bikes are involved in track action against cars, things are interesting. There is a long-standing rivalry between race cars and bikes, and even though bikes have the upper hand, thanks to the far better power-to-weight ratio, things don't end happily for the two-wheelers.
Everybody is careful both with MotoGP riders and bikes
The biggest problem when it comes to a premier class bike and rider going shoulder to shoulder with their four-wheeled rivals is that the former are at a much bigger risk. And nobody is willing to take this risk...
MotoGP bikes cost a fortune, often more than top-level race cars and crashing one for the sake of shooting a commercial is not exactly lucrative. Even more, money comes and goes, but broken bones and possibly more severe injuries are not the thing a MotoGP team manager is looking for, not even off-season.
If a rider crashes in a championship race or when training, it sort of comes with the job, and the team is prepared to deal with this work-related incident. However, crashing while doing a stunt like the one after the jump doesn't sound right, and that's why we'll most likely never see a MotoGP rider giving his 100% in such a publicity stunt.
As for the funny photos in the adjacent gallery, this is how things look when your 360-degree browser plugin crashes.
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