As the MotoGP season kicks off this weekend, championship promoter Carmelo Ezpeleta wants there to be fewer teams and more different nationalities in future.
Here we go again for a new season of MotoGP! Francesco Bagnaia is putting his title back into play this weekend in Portugal, where the first of the 21 Grands Prix of the season will be held. A season which will be marked by the establishment of sprint races on Saturday, of a length representing approximately half of the race on Sunday, and which will bring points (between 1 and 12) to the first nine. A few days before kick-off, Carmelo Ezpeleta, president of Dorna, promoter of the MotoGP world championship, spoke in an interview withAFP about the changes he would like to see in the future.
“What is certain is that we will not have more teams, it would not be beneficial for the discipline. This season, they are already eleven for 22 pilots. We would like to have a little less. Twenty pilots would be ideal because depending on the money that we have to redistribute and share, increasing the number of pilots is not part of our objectives. Above all, I would like there to be more nationalities represented among the drivers,” he says.
Soon a women’s world championship?
In MotoGP, there will indeed be ten Spaniards, six Italians, two Frenchmen, a Portuguese, a Japanese, a South African and an Australian this season. In the lower categories, there are slightly more nationalities (eleven in Moto2, twelve in Moto3), but the Spaniards (twelve in Moto2, eight in Moto3) and the Italians (four in Moto2, five in Moto3) remain in the majority. For comparison, there is only one Frenchman in Moto3, Lorenzo Fellon (18), and none in Moto2.
Carmelo Ezpeleta also spoke about the presence of women in the world championship, motorcycling being officially a mixed discipline. “We are working on it to get more. In the future, we are considering creating a women’s world championship, which could then allow some of them to compete with the men. For the moment, there are not many women in our championships because there are already not many in the lower categories”. Only the 26-year-old Spaniard Ana Carrasco actually drives in Moto3.
