After the announcement that MotoGP was canceling some events with a view to moving ahead on others, today, Dorna announced a plan for the next three races on the WorldSBK calendar. Racing will resume at Jerez on the weekend after MotoGP leaves, and will then move to Portimao and Aragon.

The schedule does mean rearranging the existing plans. The Donington Park round of WorldSBK, planned for the weekend of July 5th, and the already rescheduled Assen round of WorldSBK on the weekend of August 23rd, have been postponed again. No new date has been set for the races, but the announcement says they will be reviewed as the pandemic situation develops.

Below is the press release from Dorna announcing the plans:

UPDATE: 2020 WorldSBK season situation features positive prospects

Progress is being made in order to have the World Superbike Championship restart under safe conditions this season

The outlines of a 2020 MotoGP calendar are starting to take shape. Today, Dorna announced that the races at Phillip Island and Silverstone have been canceled. MotoGP will not visit either the UK or Australia in 2020.

The news does not come as a surprise. The strategy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic chosen by the Australian government foresees opening the country to international travel only in December of 2020, making planning a race there almost impossible. Australia, thanks in part to its remote location, has been extremely successful in containing the pandemic, with only 103 recorded deaths. The fact that a member of the McLaren team tested positive for the coronavirus during the Australian F1 Grand Prix in March made it less likely for restrictions to be eased for international sport.

Today, the FIM announced that the Grand Prix Commission had decided on revised engine allocations for both the MotoGP and Moto3 classes. And in doing so, they gave a hint at how many races a 2020 MotoGP calendar might contain.

The GPC announced that in the MotoGP class, concession manufacturers (Aprilia and KTM) would be allowed 6 engines per rider for the season if the season consists of 11 races or less, and 7 engines if the season consists of up to 14 races. Non-concession manufacturers (Honda, Ducati, Suzuk, Yamaha) would have 4 or 5 engines in the respective cases.

The next piece of the 2021 rider puzzle has just fallen into place. After strong rumours over the weekend, as well as tacit confirmation from team boss Davide Tardozzi, Ducati have confirmed that Jack Miller will join the factory Ducati team for the 2021 MotoGP season, with an option to extend the contract into 2022.

The move is a logical one on the part of Ducati. Ducati have long used Pramac as a team for nurturing talent and preparing them to go into the factory squad, as they have indeed done with Danilo Petrucci. Miller had shown significant progress since arriving at Pramac in 2018, finishing the 2019 season with five podiums.

Ducati made its confidence in Miller clear throughout 2018 and 2019, entrusting the Australian to test new parts before moving them up to the factory squad. It was Miller who first tested Ducati's holeshot device, at Motegi in 2018, and also Ducati's "shapeshifter", which squats the suspension on the straight, at Buriram in 2019.

After thirteen and a half weeks of silence, MotoGP bikes are to roar into life once again in their natural habitat. The KTM RC16 machines are to spend two days testing at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, on May 27th and 28th. The last time MotoGP bikes were on track was at Qatar, on February 24th.

Factory rider Pol Espargaro will be joined at the Red Bull Ring by test rider Dani Pedrosa, where they will continue work on the RC16. Although development work on the bike stopped for over a month between mid-March and the middle of April, due to restrictions put in place in Austria to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, KTM are keen to continue testing the 2020 engine and the new chassis which made its debut in November last year at the Valencia and Jerez tests.

The good news was that Dorna had submitted a plan to hold two races in Jerez on the 19th and 26th July, and that the authorities in Andalusia and the city of Jerez had supported the plan. But many obstacles remained in the path to turning the plan into reality. Now, nearly three weeks later, those obstacles are starting to disappear.

The biggest obstacle was removed on Monday, when the Spanish government announced that the enforced quarantine on anyone entering the country would be lifted from July 1st. The quarantine on entry was one of the major complications for the race in Jerez, as it would mean anyone entering from outside Spain - including engineers from Japan, Italy, and Austria, mechanics from many places around the world, and of course, riders - would have had to self isolate for 14 days on arriving in Spain, before traveling on to Jerez.

With the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic hopefully behind us, the gears of the motorcycle world are starting to grind again. Riders are training once again, and their thoughts are turning to the future.

It is also clear that riders, teams, and factories are starting to think about 2021. This summer had promised to unleash a Silly Season of unrivaled scale, with all riders bar Tito Rabat out of contract at the end of 2020. January and February threw a wet blanket over the wilder speculation, as Maverick Viñales extend his contract with the factory Yamaha squad, Fabio Quartararo was promoted to the factory Yamaha team, and Valentino Rossi was promised a factory-supported Yamaha should he decide to continue for 2021.