Casey Stoner blasts sprint race format: “MotoGP is too easy”

Casey Stoner has criticised the sprint race format in MotoGP, claiming it creates a playing field which unnaturally impacts the grands prix.

MotoGP introduced the new format of a sprint race on the Saturday of each round last year, with Francesco Bagnaia winning the 2023 title.

This year, Bagnaia trails Jorge Martin by 24 points heading into this weekend’s season-finale. But Bagnaia has won 10 out of 19 Sunday races, with Martin winning just three.

Martin’s brilliance in the Saturday sprints could prove to be a crucial factor if he converts his large lead into a first championship. He will be confirmed as champion if he wins the sprint on Saturday in Barcelona.

But two-time champion Stoner told GPOne: “Motorsport is supposed to be the best riders on the most difficult platform to drive or ride, and at the moment MotoGP is too easy.

“They don’t have enough control over the bike. The engineers are making too big of a difference.

“Then they put the sprint race which reduces the amount of track time that they get to concentrate for the long race.

“We are not supposed to have  aworld championship with miniatures, it’s supposed to be an endurance event,

“It’s basically like trying to say ‘okay, we’re going to have a marathon, now 10 laps is not a marathon, it’s 43 kilometres!’

“It’s gruelling, very hard work. So we need to have stability, the world championship is supposed to be over a long distance race.

“You can’t have people that are very good over a short period of time, they can run the soft tyre. You have to think about race distance.

“Also, you [should not] get points for these sort of sprint races because the points are supposed to come on Sunday when it is the main race.

“It’s very difficult to set a bike up. So that you can be focused throughout the entire race.

“At the moment, we are putting such focus on one lap, it’s very important to get through the Q2 from the first practice.

“So this stops everybody from thinking about race set-up, getting everything done for that.

“Then, I think, this is why we see on a Sunday that there’s quite a big spread between the riders because not everybody’s ready for the race pace.”

Factoring in electronics and aero, Stoner claimed: “In general, I think the MotoGP bike is now one of the easiest motorcycles to ride in the world.”

Stoner won the MotoGP titles in 2007 with Ducati and 2011 with Honda.

His victory with Ducati was a false dawn for the manufacturer. They struggled for the next 15 years without a championship despite signing Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo.

Bagnaia ended that hoodoo in 2022, but Stoner has been a regular critic of modern technology on MotoGP machinery.

He has now lambasted the two-year-old format which could aid Martin taking the championship from Bagnaia.