After considerable delay and faffing about, MotoGP has announced an updated 2020 racing schedule.
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s MotoGP season has been a disaster. The Moto2 and Moto3 classes ran at Qatar in March, but the premiere class missed the opening race—and since, then there have been no other races. International travel is extremely difficult, due to quarantine measures, and with the global economy crashing, teams are likely nervous about spending money on travel, in case sponsorships fall through.
MotoGP has filled the gap by broadcasting e-racing and publishing video content for free, but that’s not enough to keep most experienced fans interested. Thankfully, predictions of a cancelled season have turned out to be wrong, and we’ve got a new race calendar. According to MotoGP’s just-announced schedule, roadracing will resume on the July 19 weekend, at Jerez. You can see the current version below.
Note that there’s still room for change. At this point, all the scheduled races take place in Europe, which makes sense. It makes travel less complicated, especially when you race at the same track on back-to-back weekends, which is the case for Jerez, Misano, Aragon, Valencia and the Red Bull Ring. The four to-be-determined races are all in overseas markets: Texas, Thailand, Argentina, Malaysia. MotoGP says it will confirm those events by the end of July.
Earlier this year, MotoGP management said it was possible we’d see racing right until Christmas, and if those overseas dates are added to the schedule, that might happen. There’s little time to spare between most of the dates on the existing schedule, so we may be looking at a race season that extends longer than usual.
