MotoGP head cheese Carmelo Ezpeleta is prepared to sacrifice Spain’s stranglehold on the series’ calendar in order to broaden its appeal across the world.
Ezpeleta, himself from Barcelona, believes that having one area hosting a quarter of MotoGP races is not sustainable - especially as Portugal’s Portimao circuit has also expressed a strong interest in having the MotoGP circus in town.
The calendar will move to 20 races in 2020 and then up to 22 between 2022 and 2026, and some venues may rotate their involvement.
“Right now we have four grands prix in Spain, two in Italy and the rest of the countries have one. Two of the manufacturers are based in Italy, many of the teams are based there so we will, in principal, maintain two races there,” said Ezpeleta.
“The only way to accept the new countries is to reduce the races in the place that have more. Portugal have request the possibility to have a grand prix. We talk with them and they agree that if they can have three grands prix every five years, it’s OK for them.
They prefer to have one every year but we cannot concentrate 25 per cent of grands prix in one region and it’s for that we decided the best way is a rotation. We could do it on who pays the most, but we will not do that.
“We think the best way is to make a rotation of the five races on the Iberian peninsula, every circuit will have three races in five years.”
Currently, Kymiring will be added to the schedule in 2020 with the new Indonesian track joining in 2021. Portimao, which is already the series’ contingency track, want to come on board in 2022 but it is dependant on public funding.
