MotoGP race weekend revamp
MotoGP is ready for a turnaround. The organizers, the teams and the Grand Prix Commission have jointly agreed on significant adjustments to the race weekend schedule. The starting gun for these changes will already be fired at the British Grand Prix.
MotoGP has announced that there will be a redesign of the weekend schedule for the MotoGP class starting with the next round of the 2023 season at Silverstone. The adjustments to the weekend structure were unanimously agreed by the MotoGP teams and have therefore received the approval of the Grand Prix Commission (GPC).
Renewal of the Pre-Qualifying format
The changes mainly concern the so-called ‘Pre-Qualifying’ format, which has been in place since 2012. This format allowed the top 10 drivers from the combined free practice times to qualify directly for Q2. The remaining drivers battled for the top two positions in Q1 to advance to Q2.
This year, the introduction of the MotoGP Sprint changed the weekend format significantly. The shorter race on Saturday afternoon meant that qualifying was moved to Saturday morning. The previous ‘Free Practice 4’ session was transformed into the third practice session of the weekend, simply called ‘Free Practice’, and was the only practice session that did not count towards Q1/Q2 ‘Pre-Qualifying’.
As a result, all of ‘Pre-Qualifying’ took place in the 105 minutes of practice on Friday, which in turn led to greater importance being placed on setting a fast lap in FP1, the first session of the weekend.
Criticism of the previous format
Over the course of the current season, concerns were increasingly raised that the new format was too intense. Riders and teams barely had time to set up their bikes for a particular track before they had to start attacking the clock.
The new structure changes the previous ‘Practice 1’, which has been in place since early 2023, to ‘Free Practice 1’, which is irrelevant to Q1/Q2 ‘Pre-Qualifying’, again giving teams time to set up the bike and riders the opportunity to start slowly into the race weekend . This means that the Saturday morning session will be renamed ‘Free Practice 2’, while the Friday afternoon session will simply change from ‘Practice 2’ to ‘Practice’. This ‘Practice’ is now the only timed session that counts for the Q1/Q2 seedings.
New schedule in detail
- FP1 – Friday morning, not timed, does not count for Q1/Q2
- Practice – Friday afternoon, timed, only session that counts for Q1/Q2 seedings, top 10 directly to Q2
- FP2 – Saturday morning, not timed, does not count for Q1/Q2
The new weekend structure will come into effect from the next round of the 2023 MotoGP World Championship, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, which takes place August 4-6.
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