Sprints made MotoGP weekends ‘heavier’, Sunday ‘the easy part!'

While F1 only adds the shorter Saturday races to its schedule at half-a-dozen events, MotoGP introduced a Sprint at every one of the 20 rounds.

Qualifying has been moved to Saturday morning to accommodate the extra race, with Friday afternoon practice deciding the top ten riders with direct access to Q2.

Meanwhile, a packed Saturday now features the full range of free practice, qualifying and (Sprint) race. Sunday’s schedule then sees a 10-minute warm-up in the morning and full-length grand prix in the afternoon.

“Sincerely, I think that it made the weekends a lot more heavy, in general,” Morbidelli said of the new 'Sprint' weekend format. “The Friday is heavy. Saturday is very, very difficult. And then Sunday’s race can almost be the easy part!

"Everything is done [by Sunday]. The big mess of the Sprint race is over. You go for a nice, long race where everybody is less aggressive and everything.

“So from our perspective, [Sprints] made the weekend heavier. But we have to respond to this situation and we have to do our maximum in every occasion.

“Every big challenge is nice to face and this - heavy weekends – is one of them. And we can't forget the show is probably the most important thing.

“This is a sport and this has to be, at the same time, a show. And if it's better for the show, then it's OK. I have some doubts about that. Things could be done and faced in a better way, but for sure it’s a step upwards.”

Bastianini: ‘It’s 50-50 rider-bike… But the rider has to make the difference on Friday’

Countryman Enea Bastianini explained that with MotoGP so close, how well a rider works with their team to quickly find a bike set-up on Friday conditions the outcome on Sunday.

“The MotoGP level now is so high and with everything we have to do, working with the data etc, sometimes it's not easy to understand which is the key [set-up aspect] of each track. And you arrive [at a set-up only] on Sunday,” the factory Ducati rider told Crash.net.

“But if you [only] arrive on Sunday, it means you start from behind on the grid and in MotoGP it’s always complicated to catch and pass riders because the front pressure is coming up and then it's impossible to stop the bike.”

Fabio Quartararo feels success in MotoGP has now become a ‘70%-30%’ bike-rider split. Bastianini said it’s more like 50-50 for him but emphasised that the rider side is not just about when the bike is moving.

“Maybe it’s half and half, the bike and the rider, for me. Because the rider has to make the difference during the Friday. If you work very well [with the team] during Friday, all of the weekend is more simple,” he said.

Bastianini became the first rider to be injured in a MotoGP Sprint race, fracturing his shoulder when he was taken down by Luca Marini at the Portimao season opener.

The four-time 2022 race winner then caused a first-turn accident in Catalunya, leaving him with fractures to his hand and ankle.