With more than 20 rounds on their respective calendars, it is increasingly common for Formula 1 and MotoGP to have Grand Prix races on the same dates. And the CEO of Dorna, Carmelo Ezpeleta, admitted that this will not be possible to mitigate even with Liberty Media owning both championships.
Asked by the website GPOne.com if it will be possible to limit the overlap of dates between the two top categories of motorsport, the Spaniard denied:
– It’s impossible. If we have 22 Grand Prix races, F1 has 24 and SBK has 13 in a period between February and November, it is very difficult not to have conflicts. You can only try to schedule the races at different times.
Ezpeleta also revealed that the MotoGP season may start earlier in the future: ‘Starting in February could be a possibility, considering the time we would need to go to the East, we are thinking about it‘.
In 2002, the first season of the MotoGP era, the first round was on April 7th, with some seasons starting in the middle of that month. However, with more Grand Prix races being added, the start date has been getting earlier, but it was only since 2014 that March has consistently been the month of the opening GP.
