Dorna

While Silly Season for MotoGP seems to start earlier and earlier, the announcement of the calendar seems to get pushed back every year. 2011 is no exception, and even though September has started, there is still no provisional MotoGP calendar for next year, something which is normally published around the time of the Brno MotoGP weekend.

The reason for this year's delay is that the calendar faces a number of complications: Firstly, most people in the paddock are unhappy with the date of the opening MotoGP round at Qatar. While MotoGP fans had to wait until the second week of April for the season opener, the World Superbike series had already been underway for six weeks, and was entering its third weekend of racing. Then there is the issue of the Hungarian MotoGP round that went missing, the option of running Laguna Seca and Indianapolis back-to-back to help save money, and a host of other unresolved questions.

Dorna and Indianapolis Motor Speedway have just confirmed that MotoGP is to be back at Indy for 2011. The deal sees MotoGP returning for a single year in 2011, with a review to take place in light of the changes due to happen from 2012 onwards. The renewal sees the Indy GP scheduled for the same weekend next year as this year, with the race to be run on August 28th.

The press releases issued by Dorna and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway are shown below, but the Dorna press release contains an interesting hint about the future of MotoGP. Dorna boss Carmelo Ezpeleta mentions the changes coming for 2012, saying the agreement "permits all possibilities to be explored at the end of 2011 when the current contractual agreement with the MSMA and IRTA is reviewed, as MotoGP continues to develop into a new era in the sport in 2012." It has been widely hinted that Dorna intends to radically revise the agreement the company has with the manufacturers' association, the MSMA, and this would seem to confirm it. Rumors suggest Dorna wants to remove the exclusive right to make technical regulations which the MSMA currently holds, after the 800cc rules turned out to be such an expensive bust. Comments such as these by Ezpeleta - made in an entirely inappropriate context - strongly suggest there is much truth behind this, and that MotoGP is going to undergo a huge shakeup for the 2012 season.

The standard joke in motorsports paddocks around the world is that the way to make a small fortune in motor racing is to start off with a large one. MotoGP - like all other forms of motorsports - costs a lot of money, and somebody has to pay for it. The question of how much MotoGP costs - and how much money it generates - is an interesting one, and not one to which many people have a ready answer.

The Grand Prix Commission, MotoGP's ruling body, met at Brno today, and as expected, they finalized the demise of the two-stroke engine from Grand Prix racing. As of 2012, the 125cc class is to be replaced by Moto3, a 250cc single-cylinder four-stroke engine, with a maximum bore of 81mm.

Unlike Moto2, however, the class will not use a spec engine, but instead will use rules to help keep costs down. Any manufacturer building a Moto3 engine must sell it at 10,000 euros or less, and be prepared to supply at least 15 riders. The idea is to prevent factories from pouring large amounts of resources into engine development, and then making it available to only one or two teams, thus assuring themselves of the valuable publicity that a certain victory would provide. More than one manufacturer has already shown an interest in the class, though the requirement to supply at least 15 riders becomes a little difficult to enforce as more manufacturers get involved. After all, if there are 4 manufacturers and 32 riders on the grid, it is hard to test whether they are all willing to supply 15 riders if the interest in the engines is divided equally among the various teams.

The rule changes that have been adopted in the MotoGP series since the class went four-stroke in 2002 have generally been met with increasing disappointment by the fans. The 990cc format is generally viewed as the high point of motorcycle racing for many years, even after the fuel allowance was cut from 24 to 22 liters.

But since capacity was cut from 990cc to 800cc, and the fuel allowance cut from 22 to 21 liters, MotoGP's rulemaking body, the Grand Prix Commission, has been buried under a deluge of criticism - not least from ourselves here at MotoMatters.com. Since then, things have gone from bad to worse, with the introduction of the tire restrictions, then the single tire rule, and finally the limits on engines, with criticism growing more vehement at every rule change, nearly all of it aimed at Dorna, the company which runs MotoGP, and its CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta.

Ever since its return to America, MotoGP in the USA has been something of an anomaly. When the series first headed back across the Atlantic in 2005, it was only the MotoGP class that made the trip to Laguna Seca, with cost and limited paddock space cited as reasons for leaving the (then) 250 and 125 classes back in Europe. When the Red Bull US GP in Laguna was joined by the Red Bull Indianapolis GP at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway facility in 2008, the two support classes joined the MotoGP riders in the US, but only at Indy. Furthermore, the two US rounds have also always been separated by at least one European race, forcing the teams to fly their bikes and equipment out to the US twice.

With the success of the switch from the 250cc class to the four-stroke Moto2 formula - in terms of cost, and certainly in terms of grid size - the many fans of the two-stroke engine have been fearing the worst: the disappearance of the last two-stroke formula from the MotoGP paddock. At Assen, news is unofficially emerging that their fears have been confirmed. For the members of the Grand Prix commission are close to an agreement on replacing the 125cc class, and the bad news for two-stroke enthusiasts is that the smallest of the Grand Prix classes is about to turn four stroke.

From 2012 - or possibly 2013, according to some rumors - the 125s will be replaced with a 250cc four-stroke single. Contrary to earlier reports, though, the bikes will not be based on the existing four-stroke engines being used in motocross bikes such as Yamaha's YZ250F or Honda's CRF250R. The engines will have a maximum bore of 81 millimeters, making for much higher-revving short-stroke motors.