This will be the new MotoGP

New course and, this 2023, MotoGP reinvents itself. The World Cup is given a facelift and, in addition to the entry of new circuits, teams and changes in many garages, the premier class is launching a new format that will impose more equality on an increasingly tight class. The sprints on Saturdays reach all the grand prix to continue fueling the fight for the title with more action on the track and, the fact of adding a new race every Saturday means that, inevitably, the entire competition program for the weekend has to be changed. In other words, it also affects the training sessions that, from the start of the course with the Portuguese GP (March 26), they will never be the same again.

With a week to go to start the preseason in Sepang, the organization of the World Cup already confirms the schedules to be followed during this new course throughout the season. The changes affect all categories, even the lower ones, who will lose a lot of time on the track throughout the weekend. Fridays will continue to be practice days, but work is going to be much hectic for the riders in the premier class. They keep their two usual sessions: P1 (formerly FP1) will start at 10:45 and will last 45 minutes, but the big change will come in the second round, at 3:00 p.m. and closing the day with a session that lasts until the hour (usually, Moto2 closed all the training sessions). In addition, these two sessions will be the only ones that count towards Saturday’s qualifications. In the case of Moto2, they hold two 40-minute sessions on Fridays and in Moto3 they will become 35 minutes (before they were all 45 min).

Saturdays will be loaded with action. It will start at 8:40 a.m. with the third sessions of Moto3 and Moto2. For the smaller categories of the World Cup, the P3 will be used in the combined to determine the classifications. Of course, on Saturdays they will only have 30 minutes each to make the cut to Q2. After the practices, it will be the turn for MotoGP with the only timed that will be considered free practice (free round): 30 minutes of training that will not be used to determine the cutoff of the classifications, which will be held immediately after, for 15 minutes each. And, finished the qualifying of the lower categories The final climax will come with the MotoGP Sprint, at 3:00 p.m.: a race in the middle of the laps of the appointment on Sunday (with half the points) that will put the final point of the day with its subsequent press conference with the drivers on the podium, the poleman and the leader of the World Championship. And it is that, unlike Formula 1, the result of the race will not determine the starting grid for Sunday, which will be the same as the sprint.

And Sunday will also change significantly. To the surprise of many, the Moto2 and Moto3 Warm Ups are eliminated, that they will not have more time to decide before the big date. The MotoGP riders will have it, although with 10 minutes to ride on the track from 9:45 a.m. Immediately afterwards, a Rider Fan Parade, where the drivers will take a lap around the track to greet all the fans in the stands, following the F1 tradition. The moment of truth will not have many changes: the Moto3 race will start at 11:00 a.m., the Moto2 race at 12:15 p.m. (five minutes earlier than usual) and MotoGP as a grand finale at 2:00 p.m. with their respective procedures for podiums and traditional press conferences.

The new MotoGP schedules

Friday

Saturday

Sunday