Will Liberty Media stage joint-race weekends for F1 and MotoGP?
F1 and MotoGP now fall under the same ownership with Liberty Media.
It means the dream scenario of a joint-race weekend between the world’s premier two wheel and four wheel series is a possibility.
But Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta insists there are no immediate plans.
"Well, it's something that at the moment, for obvious reasons, is not in the immediate plans,” Ezpeleta told Motorsport.
“And it's not something that we are working on, but it's not something that we are ruling out for the medium-term future either.
“But having said that, the reality is that it makes limited sense, because at the end of the day we have some events with our own fan base, which is a different fan base in most places to the Formula 1 fan base.
“They sell, they sell out in many circuits and so do we, so getting all of us together in the same event, in the same weekend, has difficulties and the return on investment is not very clear today.
“Then you also have problems with the different sponsors, the TV cameras, so it is a project, or it would be a rather complicated project, let's say.
“Then again, there are a number of circuits that can run both [series], but there are not so many, so it is a project that is not discarded, but we are not working on it either.”
The obvious difficulty is the safety aspect of whichever circuit host the joint-race weekend.
Optimising the safety protocols for both bikes and cars would no mean feat.
Ezpeleta also revealed that bringing in an attendance large enough to cover the costs of hosting the joint-race weekend would be problematic.
Restricted by the maximum attendance of a race circuit, MotoGP and F1 could expect to sell every ticket without each other. Meaning that Liberty Media would be leaving a lot of money on the table, should they choose to put both series onto the same track on the same weekend.
Liberty Media, who bought F1 in 2016, acquired 86% of Dorna and MotoGP this week.
