MotoGP spectators: Thailand top, Silverstone drop

For the second year in succession, the Thai MotoGP pulled in the biggest weekend crowd of the season.

After making its MotoGP debut in 2018, the Buriram event shrugged off any 'year-two' blues by boasting a further 4,120 spectators for a weekend total of 226,655 fans.

Just over 95,000 fans were present on race day, where they witnessed a thrilling final turn showdown between Marc Marquez and Fabio Quartararo.

But in terms of the Sunday crowd alone it was Assen that topped the 2019 list with 105,000 fans (exactly matching the 2018 crowd, indicating a sold-out capacity) while Le Mans and Sepang also cracked the 100k figure.

However overall MotoGP crowd numbers for the season fell by 21,129 during the second year of a 19-round calendar, for a total of 2,863,113 trackside spectators.

The biggest drop was by 10,827 weekend fans at the British Grand Prix, an unsurprising reaction to last year's race day cancellation, but Mugello (-10,800), Aragon (-9,667) and Austria (-9.431) might be puzzled at having posted similar reductions.

By contrast, Argentina grew by 7,947 fans in 2019, closely followed by the Sachsenring on +7,807, allowing the German Grand Prix to join Thailand and France in hosting over 200,000 spectators this season.

Rain was a recorded during the French, Czech, Austrian, Thai, Japanese and Australian rounds this year compared with the Argentine, Austrian, British, Australian, Malaysian and Valencian rounds last year.

Jerez, credited with the biggest weekend crowd since 1995 courtesy of a reported 263,648 fans in 2009, brought in a more modest 151,513 this year.

The season-opening Qatar night race continues to be the smallest event of the season, although this year's 32,252 total was its best since joining the calendar in 2004.