Amidst COVID-19 flap, MotoGP’s man in charge says there’ll still be a 2020 season

The MotoGP week started with days of bad news (first the Qatar GP race was cancelled, then the whole Thai round was called off). But, the man in charge at Dorna (MotoGP’s controlling body) says no need to worry, there will still be a race season.

“There will absolutely be a 2020 MotoGP season,” said Carmelo Ezpeleta. “We will try to continue with everything and stay aware of the situation because it’s changing day by day, but our wish is to do all the races in the 2020 season.”

So, not only are series officials trying to reschedule the whole Thai round (probably for late in the season, they say), but they’re also trying to run the Qatar race as well.

We’re in rare territory this year, but as Nick Harris points out in his blog at MotoGP.com, season openers have been cancelled before. He points out the 1980 cancellation of the opening Austrian round (due to snow), which was itself a replacement for a cancelled Venezuelan round, as an example. And, there’s been other cases where the big bikes didn’t run (Brno, 1982) for some reason (track safety, often).

So, the masterminds in charge are keen that we don’t worry. Will we actually see a new schedule soon? Hard to say. With the US government starting to talk about closing down borders, it’s possible the Austin GP might be the next race that sees a cancellation …