Our partner Simon Patterson, of The Race, is one of the few journalists who today continues to live independently the MotoGP World Cup, commercially known as MotoGP World. This already gives a track of the original idea that was behind that choice: to turn the queen category into the only important category. But the steps that the British predicts goes even further.
Sports speaking, in the last two decades the focus has been increasingly putting on MotoGP, but from Dorna they have taken care of Moto3 and Moto2, knowing that the legends of tomorrow are polishing in them. And knowledgeable, also, that it is not the same to reach MotoGP being a complete stranger for the large mass of fans, than with a small legion of worldwide followers and titles with value.
But following Dorna’s acquisition by Liberty Media, things are starting to move and perhaps quite fast. The “small” categories seem not to interest Americans much, who are preparing new plans for them, as Patterson himself reveals.
In a way they are looking to make MotoGP a F1 with two wheels, and that happens that nothing and no one can shade the queen category, neither on the track nor outside. A motor racing of a championship that has always been characterized by a certain equity between categories, which were not only a previous step.
That changed in part with the Moto3 age standards and, also, with the fact of categorizing them as 2 and 3, less important, but the general functioning had not varied too much. In the biggest paddocks the teams of the two categories had hole, and in the little ones they had to go to tents. So far everything had some logic.
More space for motorcycp is sought at the cost of Moto2 and Moto3
But the new approach, which also seems a first step only, is to separate the categories, take away the boxes option and take them all either to tents or make them their own trucks to house their boxes and hospitals, leaving the main paddocks to MotoGP as it happens in F1.
As we say, according to Patterson, it is only a first change, because it is also planned to alter the schedules of the weekends to give more prominence and track time to MotoGP. Something that, on the other hand, in the F1 it seems that they are thinking of doing just the Contrio, because it subtracts emotion to those already little exciting races that live lately.
Even so, the most worrying thing is that it is the first step, because it has even put on the table to make Moto2 and Moto3 only compete in European rounds to lower costs. Something with which teams, which are not being consulted in the process, do not agree.
In the end, one of the fears that were with the arrival to MotoGP is being fulfilled and that is that the ignorance of how motorcycle races really work leads to making decisions that, in the long run, do not benefit the sport. Because removing visibility from the two categories will make them lose even more sponsors, and that will make the teams have to look (although some already do) payment pilots at all costs, and what will lead to the end that in the long run the quality of the pilots down and with it the show.
Not long ago, Ezpeleta claimed that in F1, or in other sports worldwide, they did not only arrive the best if they were from the same country. He ignored, in a premeditated manner, that for many technological advances and equality that there is, on motorcycles the difference is still marked by the pilot …
