Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta has held a special press conference this afternoon, explaining the reasons that have led to this rather unusual decision
31.03.2022 ( Aggiornata il 31.03.2022 20:33 )
As of tomorrow, 1 April, the world championship riders should have been out on track at Termas de Rio Hondo to begin a long weekend of practice in preparation for the race on Sunday 3 April. And yet, some breaking news from Argentina confirms that while the riders are ready, their bikes or not. Or at least some are not. Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta has explained what’s going on during a special press conference today.
Problems with the cargo flight
“As you know, two weeks ago we were in Indonesia – he explains – and everything had been well prepared, with a week and a half between rounds. Last Wednesday, we sent flights from Lombok to Argentina and one flight had a problem in Mombasa, Africa. So we took the decision to send another plane that had already reached Argentina back to Lombok to collect the remaining cargo before returning to Argentina. But this flight also had a problem in Mombasa and hasn’t arrived in time”.
At first, the hope was that the flight could depart yesterday and arrive in Argentina today but the issue proved more serious: “We’ve been forced to postpone Friday’s sessions”, he added. "The plane suffered an engine problem, so we asked for two more flights to travel from London and Paris and if all goes well, the flight from Mombasa will arrive in time so that we can stick to the new schedule for Saturday”.
Ezpeleta: “The war in Ukraine has complicated things”
As the Dorna CEO explains, the teams affected by these delays are team Gresini, team VR46 and also Ducati: “We need to offer everyone the same conditions”, explains Ezpeleta, “so even if this only affected one team, we’d have postponed”. But what would happen if the flight fails to arrive tomorrow? “It’s a good question, but we’ll know in advance. We’ve learned a lot over 30 years of course and the flight situation is always complicated. The problem is exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Many cargo flights are run by Russian companies and right now roughly 20% of these flights have been cancelled. There simply aren’t enough flights right now, and we don’t have other solutions if they can’t fix the engine issue with the place at Mombasa”.
Ezpeleta: “Reduce the races? Definitely not”
Looking ahead, might the MotoGP calendar need to be revised? “We might need to reconsider back-to-back races but this isn’t one of those cases. This is GP number 499 and it’s the first time this has happened, it’s not positive but we need to accept these things. The only solution would be to reduce the races, but there’s so much interest in MotoGP so we don’t want to do that. Scheduling the calendar is one of the toughest tasks.”
Translated by Heather Watson
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