Qatar season-openers 'safe', 'no reason to doubt' European events

Tech3 team boss and IRTA president Herve Poncharal is confident that the planned MotoGP season-openers in Qatar and following European events can take place as planned.

That would cover 15 of the provisional 19-rounds, while the fate of the end-of-season flyaways (Japan, Thailand, Australia and Malaysia) plus the postponed Argentina and US events is unlikely to be clear for some time.

In reality, even if more events are lost, numbers are likely to remain close to the current 19 rounds by adding more back-to-back races at the same circuit (currently only Qatar) and/or inclusion of the Mandalika reserve track.

"2020 was a tough. A year ago, nobody knew if we were going to have a championship. Finally, we did 14 races in MotoGP - 15 in Moto2 and Moto3 - with great racing, with nine different winners," Poncharal said.

"We thought that in 2021 the sea would be a bit calmer, but it's still very rough. We've been preparing the calendar, we had some reserve races, and you could see that south and north America are at the moment postponed.

"But we managed for the moment to keep the same number of races by having two races back-to-back in Qatar, and our friends from Portimao said 'we are ready and will be with you in 2021 also' [as round three].

"We will have a strong protocol in Qatar, which we are working on at the moment, but I believe the first two rounds are really safe and we should have a great start to the championship in Doha.

"And hopefully after Doha 2 things should be a bit easier in Europe.

"At the moment there is no reason to doubt any event on the calendar in Europe, at least. The rest is going to take a longer [to confirm]. We are quite optimistic. For sure the 'bad news' is that it looks like we will not have the public again."

MotoGP didn't race outside of Europe at all in 2020 and the viability of this year's end-of-season flyaways is again thought to depend on allowing fans at the track, for financial reasons.