MotoGP’s new weekend format: reduced costs and less predictable racing?

MotoGP announced an all-new weekend format during last weekend’s Indonesian Grand Prix which will take effect from next season.

The new schedule, which affects Friday, Saturday and Sunday, is in addition to a major overhaul of the technical regulations, which will see the current 1000cc motorcycles replaced by 850s, with reduced aero and no ride-height devices.

The revised format – which reduces practice time and increases qualifying time – was suggested by teams and manufacturers, but so far many riders aren’t keen, saying it will increase the level of risk and injuries, thereby shortening careers.

Practice will be slashed by more than a third, from two hours and 25 minutes to one hour and 35 minutes, reducing the time riders and engineers have to get their motorcycles and tyres ready for the race.

Qualifying also undergoes a major revamp. Instead of riders facing one or two 15-minute qualifying sessions on Saturday, which decide the grid for both the sprint and the grand prix grid, they will face two or three 15-minute qualifying sessions, the first deciding the sprint grid, the second and third deciding the grand prix grid.

The sprint qualifier will be contested by all 22 riders. So too will the Q1 session for the GP grid, with the fastest 12 going through to Q2 to determine the first four rows.

Some riders say the new format will increase the number of time attacks they have to make, because, like LCR Honda rider Johann Zarco says, “Every qualifying lap you lose a life.”

However, MotoGP management says that riders won’t need to do more time attacks than they currently do. Instead of making time attacks on Friday afternoon (in an effort to go direct to Q2) and during Q1 and Q2, they will do that in sprint qualifying, Q1 and Q2. On the other hand, two of the three qualifying sessions will include all 22 riders, making it trickier and riskier to do time attacks.

MotoGP’s Sunday programme will also change. Warm-up, which was reduced from 20 minutes to 10 when sprints were introduced in 2023, will be entirely done away with. Instead pit lane will open 10 minutes before the grid forms, allowing riders to ride several sighting laps. It’s yet to be decided how teams will refuel, because this is a complicated problem, with fuel chilled to get more into the tank. However, refuelling won’t take place on the grid. 

The main targets of this major weekend change are to cut costs for teams and manufacturers by reducing mileage, and to create different grids for the sprint and Grand Prix, which has been long advocated by several teams.

The new format will reduce mileage by around 44 miles per weekend, which saves close to a thousand miles over a 22-round season. That’s enough for each rider to use one less engine per championship, from eight to seven, which is a significant saving for teams and manufacturers.

The loss of free practice time may also make the racing less predictable, because riders will have less chance to do anything close to race-distance runs, so they may be less accurate in their choices of tyres.

Different grids for the Saturday and Sunday races allow riders to have two cracks at starting a race from close to the front. They should also create a better variety of racing, because current sprints and GPs are often too similar, since grid positions largely determine the character of each race.

“We already have many sessions in which we have to risk everything: PR [Friday afternoon], qualifying, the sprint and the main race,” said KTM’s Pedro Acosta. “And we have 22 rounds, with a sprint every weekend.

“I don’t know if it’s the best thing to make sprint qualifying on Friday afternoon with 22 guys on track and Q1 with 22 guys again, then Q2 and a sprint race and the main race. I mean, there are many, many times that we will be at a really high stress level.

“I could understand this format if we had sprints at half the races. The problem is that we have many races already and if you check all the riders, there aren’t many that don’t get injured during the season. With this new format, I think this will be even worse.

“We are not racing cars – when we crash, even if it’s a small one, it’s our body that touches the ground, not the cockpit.

“We are risking too much already. With 22 races, it’s impossible that risking five times at 100% every weekend, you won’t get injured.

“And no warm-up. I don’t know if it’s the cleverest thing, because if somebody crashes in Saturday qualifying, they need to check that the bike is working fine and everything is like it should be.

“Okay, now in warm-up, you only have 10 minutes, but you are finding your pace, getting the rhythm, everything is getting up to temperature, so the bike is getting ready for the race.

“With 10 minutes [immediately] before the race, before you go to the grid, if something is wrong, your Sunday is done.”

Reigning MotoGP king Marc Márquez agrees with the man who will be his factory Ducati team-mate next year.

“For the rider, it’s more intensity, more demanding,” said Márquez. “With the current schedule, it’s already enough. But we don’t decide; it is what it is and we must adapt.”

Already last year, Márquez stated, “Always they ask more and more and more of us and someday it will explode.”

Could this be the moment MotoGP explodes? Or at least rider feeling explodes?

Last Sunday at Motegi, Márquez, who is struggling with his much-mangled right arm, skipped a pre-race kart race, telling reporters, “We are not here to mess around in kart races.”

At Mandalika, Acosta suggested that the riders do need to form a group opinion about the new format, in the hope of forcing some changes. However, there is still no sign of the often-talked-about riders union.

The problem with the current system is that the riders aren’t directly consulted by MotoGP bosses, who talk with the teams, who then talk with the riders. The idea is that the teams (who, unlike the riders, are contracted to MotoGP) tell MotoGP management what the riders want. But obviously if the teams and riders want something different, the teams are unlikely to tell the bosses what the riders really want.

MotoGP management does talk with the riders during the Friday safety commission at every round, but many riders don’t bother attending, because they feel like they aren’t really listened to.

“We were approached by the teams in Misano [venue for last month’s San Marino GP] about the schedule,” said MotoGP deputy CEO Carlos Ezpeleta. “So evidently the proposal came from the teams themselves. There was a number of proposals and iterations in which the target was to maintain the level of risk, to not increase the level of risk versus today, and to get better output for the fans, the media and everybody else.