The one positive of MotoGP races without fans

Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson still says one of the highlights of his 40-plus-year career with the Canadian power trio was the Glasgow Apollo crowd loudly singing 'Closer to the Heart' during their 'Permanent Waves' tour in 1980 - a moment captured on the band's epic "Exit Stage Left" live album from 1981. And 1992 Formula 1 world champion Nigel Mansell famously said the noise of the Silverstone crowd actually gained him laptime.

The point of my constant display of affection for Rush and Mansell's hyperbole is this: Fans are an integral part of an event.

Aside from the fact that they pay money to attend grands prix and concerts, it is their devotion to whatever it is they love that is vital to that thing's existence, and ultimately then leads to more people growing aware and becoming fans. And so the cycle continues.

Crowd participation is a major element to the spectacle of a sport: the roars and cheers of thousands of people create a special atmosphere at an event. This has been thrust into the spotlight this week, as English football's Premier League returned to action following its coronavirus-forced hiatus on Wednesday. A welcome return for most (I personally couldn't care less) it was a return everyone was forced to embrace from behind their television screens.

Owing to social distancing measures to quell the spread of COVID-19, these games are being played without fans. I confess, I did watch part of one of the matches and the silence was - to use an abused cliche - deafening.

Broadcasters are offering fans the chance to watch matches with artificial crowd noises, and some stadiums are utilising that option regardless, in a bid to at least inject a little bit of atmosphere. But it does highlight my point that fans are integral to an atmosphere.

And this got me thinking about motorsport without fans.

To be fair, the MotoGP Qatar Grand Prix has for over a decade now offered up a test of this. Apparently 8,000 people come to watch MotoGP's now-traditional floodlit season-opener - not that you'd know any different. From a perspective of watching that race on TV, the lack of atmosphere actually doesn't diminish anything. Partly, that's because it's MotoGP and the racing is generally excellent, but also because you have the earth-shattering noise of 22 1,000cc four-stroke four-cylinders filling the Qatari night air.

Unfortunately, crowds continue to boo Marquez when he wins, and cheer when he crashes

If we take the admittedly not very scientific or representative excitement I get from attending a race weekend versus a test session, when it comes to being trackside, there's not much difference. And that's because motorsport has the benefit of noise, which for so many people is a key part of the experience.

There will certainly be some tracks where the lack of fans will be a bit more noticeable and will detract from the spectacle a little. Jerez - which will be the scene of the opening two races of 2020 - is a typically bonkers one in terms of crowd reaction; Le Mans and Valencia too. If MotoGP does end up adding flyaway events to its current 13-race schedule in November, the Thailand GP would definitely be poorer for the lack of a passionate crowd that, at MotoGP's first test at Buriram in 2018, turned up as a 30,000-strong army (below).

However, all of that aside, the absence of fans will also more positively mean the absence of something I utterly loathe: booing.

Negative receptions from crowds in MotoGP is hardly new. Casey Stoner was mercilessly attacked by Donington Park punters back in the late 2000s for committing the heinous crime of simply being Casey Stoner.

Two weeks after a collision with Dani Pedrosa at Le Mans, which resulted in a broken collarbone for the Honda rider, and after several run-ins with Jorge Lorenzo, the late Marco Simoncelli received a hostile reception at Catalunya. Much to the crowd's chagrin, he brilliantly went and put his customer Gresini-run Honda on pole.

But it feels like partisanship has been getting worse in recent years. More accurately, since Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi had their infamous Sepang clash in 2015, just days after the Italian accused Marquez of conspiring to sabotage his title bid in favour of then-team-mate Lorenzo.

Elements of the VR46 army in a lot of places have made their feelings for both Marquez and Lorenzo clear. In fact, so hostile were fans at the 2016 Italian GP that both riders needed security protection the whole weekend - not helped by Rossi's refusal to condemn poor conduct by fans. The Italian being pictured signing a cardboard cutout of himself with a speech bubble that read "Marquez is a bitch" at the Circuit of the Americas earlier in the year only added fuel to the flames.

Unfortunately, crowds continue to boo Marquez when he wins, and cheer when he crashes.

But he's had the last laugh. Crashing in a wet Misano warm-up in 2017 to the delight of the Rossi fans packing the Turn 3 grandstand, Marquez blew them kisses on his way back to the pits. He won the race later that day.

At Misano again last year, after an on-track incident with Rossi during qualifying, Marquez said after the race that his sole motivation in the race was, essentially, to really give the crowd something to boo about.

With us all forced to watch from home this year, perhaps this will lead to some developing a greater appreciation for the talent belonging to their trackside abuse target

Then, of course, there's been the six world titles in seven years.

If I made the rules, booing riders for simply not liking them and, even worse, cheering when they crash would result in an automatic ban from ever getting anywhere near a MotoGP event again. In a sport where the danger is significant, there's absolutely no justification for that sort of behaviour. So, if there is a positive to be found from running races without spectators, it will be the silencing of boos from a pathetic choir.

And, with us all forced to watch from home this year, perhaps this will lead to some developing a greater appreciation for the talent belonging to their trackside abuse target.