The 2022 MotoGP calendar will feature a total of 21 races, starting in Qatar on March 6th and finishing exactly 8 months later in Valencia.
The 2022 calendar sees further expansion of the number of races, as Dorna add new circuits and new countries to the schedule.
The Kymiring will have to wait. Today, the FIM announced that due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the complications posed by travel, the Finnish Grand Prix at the Kymiring has been canceled for 2021.
But in compensation, the circuit in Finland is to get a five-year contract to host MotoGP for the years 2022 to 2026.
So far, the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the 2020 MotoGP season has been to delay everything. But today, we had the first cancelations.
The races at the Sachsenring in Germany, Assen in the Netherlands, and the Kymiring in Finland have all been canceled for 2020.
It was already apparent on Wednesday that the Finnish round of MotoGP would have to be postponed. Today, we have confirmation.
Lahti Events, the promoter of the Finnish MotoGP round, announced on its website that the race, due to be held on July 12th, has been postponed.
On Tuesday, the Dutch government announced it was extending the ban on public events until September 1st, putting an end to hopes of racing in June. And now yesterday, the Finnish government have ended any hope of MotoGP racing in July.
At a press conference on Wednesday evening, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced that all gatherings of over 500 people are to remain banned until July 31st.
That would make it impossible to hold the Finnish Grand Prix, due to be held on July 12th at the new Kymiring circuit, 130 km northeast of Helsinki.
The first official test at the Kymiring has wrapped up, the second day of testing taking place under much better conditions than the first day on Monday. The day started dry, though action didn’t start until 11am, the riders losing an hour of time as the test was cut short by the weather.
On a dry track, times were considerably quicker than on Monday, when the track was both wet and dirty. Where riders were circulating in the 2’10s on Monday, Bradley Smith managed to get down to 1:47.540 on the Aprilia.
Testing has come to an end after the first ever day of MotoGP action at the Kymring in Finland, six of the test riders for the six official MotoGP manufacturers turning some laps at the newly built circuit.
Present were Stefan Bradl for Honda, Jonas Folger for Yamaha, Sylvain Guintoli for Suzuki, Mika Kallio for KTM, Michele Pirro for Ducati and Bradley Smith for Aprilia. Kallio was chosen over KTM’s other test rider, Dani Pedrosa, to give the Finnish rider a chance to ride on his home track.
The test was convened mainly to give Michelin a chance to understand the stress the track will put on the tires. Although they have software that can simulate tire loads and wear based on the layout of the track and the abrasiveness of the surface, measured using special molds, that is always an approximation.
With the three overseas* races out of the way and MotoGP back in Europe, the thoughts of the teams, riders, and series organizers are starting to turn to the future.
At Le Mans, there was much discussion in team trucks and among the organizers. And as a consequence, there was a stream of paddock rumor, interviews, and news articles on what’s coming up for the future. Here’s a round up of recent news.
The chance of there being 20 races on the MotoGP calendar in 2020 drew closer today, with the announcement that the Finnish track will be ready to host a MotoGP test later this year.
As such, on August 19th and 20th, the factory test teams will spend two days trying out the surface and facilities at the Kymiring in Finland.
Dorna today unveiled the provisional MotoGP calendar for 2019, confirming much of what we already knew. The schedule will consist of 19 races, as the circuit in Mexico City will not be ready to host a MotoGP race next year, and the Kymiring in Finland is also still under construction. Both races are provisionally expected to be on the 2020 calendar.
The calendar is broadly similar to this year’s schedule, with a few tweaks. The season kicks off at Qatar on 10th March, earlier than usual and a week before F1, which normally starts before MotoGP. Three weekends later, the series is racing in Argentina at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit, and two weeks after that, the whole circus heads north for the US round in Austin.
The announcement of the MotoGP test dates in the middle of last week have given a hint of how the 2019 MotoGP calendar is to take shape.
The official announcement is not expected for another month or so – Dorna are still waiting for the F1 calendar to be published, to try to avoid direct clashes with the premier car racing series.
The F1 calendar will not have the same influence as it had in previous years, however: since new owners Liberty took over the series, they have moved the start time of F1 races to 3:10pm Central European Time, some 10 minutes after MotoGP has finished the podium ceremony.
The MotoGP test schedule sees three official tests taking place over the winter, though one of them is before the official winter break. The MotoGP field will be at Jerez on the 28th and 29th November for the first official test.
This basically converts the previous private test, which most teams attended, into an official one, forcing all of the teams to take the track together, and to an extent, improving the coverage of the test.