The Assen GP is right around the corner, but attention momentarily turns to the Japanese race weekend, set to take place on 23-25 September. This is because Dorna has decided to modify the event schedule to avoid a replay of what we saw in Argentina.

Friday morning free

The very tight scheduling, with the Aragon GP taking place just one week before Motegi, combined with possible flight delays resulting from the war in Ukraine, means that the organisers are taking pre-emptive action, by making changes to the timings and sessions.

The new schedule sees the removal of any track action on Friday morning, with FP1 sessions across all classes shifted to the afternoon. FP2 will instead play out on Saturday morning, with qualifying in the afternoon. So in order to gain direct access to Q2, the combined times of the two free practice sessions will be considered, for all three classes. This, despite the fact that MotoGP also has an FP3 scheduled, set to run immediately prior to qualifying.

Translated by Heather Watson

Rins and Oliveira: a guaranteed future in MotoGP, but no signatures yet