MELBOURNE, Feb 19 (Reuters) - The Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix will move to a street circuit in Adelaide next year, ending Phillip Island's near-three-decade run hosting the MotoGP event, organisers said on Thursday.
MotoGP Sports Entertainment Group and South Australia's state government signed a six-year agreement, with the first Adelaide race scheduled for November 2027.
"This landmark event will be the first MotoGP Grand Prix to be held in a city-centre location – with the uncompromised safety standards required in the modern era of the sport," they said in a joint statement.
Unlike Formula One, MotoGP has never held a street race, primarily due to safety concerns.
Victoria state sports minister Steve Dimopoulos had said on Wednesday that his government could not an strike agreement with MotoGP to keep the race at Phillip Island.
Dimopoulos said officials had balked at MotoGP's demand to shift the event to Melbourne's Albert Park, which hosts Australia's Formula One race every year.
"We know that we could have kept (the race) in Victoria, had we sold out Phillip Island. We were never willing to sell out Phillip Island," Dimopoulos said.
Barring the pandemic-affected years of 2020-21, Phillip Island has hosted the grand prix every year since 1997. The final race at the scenic seaside track is in October.
Retired Australian rider Casey Stoner, a two-times champion who won six times at Phillip Island, questioned why MotoGP would take "possibly their best circuit" off the calendar.
"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," Stoner said.
Among current riders, reigning champion Marc Marquez of Ducati has won four MotoGP titles at Phillip Island, with his last win coming in 2024.
The Adelaide MotoGP race will revive the street circuit used for the F1 Australian Grand Prix from 1985-95 before it moved to Albert Park.
The government said the circuit would be 4.195 km with 18 turns and allow for top speeds above 340 kph.
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne and Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Peter Rutherford)
