After announcing his determination to open the 2020 MotoGP season in Jerez on July 19, Dorna boss Carmelo Ezpeleta provides a new update on the situation in his war against the coronavirus. With this credo: it might go well!
Friday May 8, Carmelo Ezpeleta, General Manager of Dorna Sports, sat down to take stock of the deal reached to offer two Grands Prix and a WorldSBK round to Jerez in July and August, as well as when we can expect to see a preview of an updated calendar. Here is the transcription, you can find the MotoGP video here and the WorldSBK video here.
Yesterday, an agreement was reached to propose the holding of two Grands Prix in Jerez in July, can you tell us about it?
« Yesterday we had a meeting with the vice-president of the regional government of Andalusia, the mayor of Jerez and myself. We have agreed the conditions to propose to organize two MotoGP events and a Superbike event there, respectively on July 19 and 26 and the first weekend of August. We have agreed on the conditions and the way in which we could organize this, and our idea is to propose to the Spanish government the possibility of doing these events according to a protocol that we are creating. We are awaiting the official response from the Spanish government on this matter. We think that this is a subject that we will be more on next week, after various meetings, and we will finally know if it is enough to allow these Grands Prix to take place at that time.. »
We are therefore awaiting official confirmation from the Spanish government. Do we know when we will have an update?
« We will start discussing the situation in Spain, then next week we will start the conversations about hosting the Grands Prix »
A test on the Wednesday before the Grand Prix in Jerez
Is it possible to organize a test on site before the first race? For the three categories?
« Yes. Our proposal is to organize a test on the Wednesday before the first weekend »
Are there any updates on a possible MotoGP calendar for this season? What are you planning?
« We are going through similar procedures with the governments of each country we want to go to, but they are separate and we think that perhaps by the first part of June we will be able to come up with a timetable. It's final. We are looking at different dates, but we are also waiting for the F1 calendar. And it will be difficult to avoid clashes with Formula 1 because it is a short period and there will be a lot of events »
A competition to watch with F1
What about WorldSBK? What is the situation ?
« We are still discussing it. We have confirmation from Jerez that it is possible to do it there. We don't know exactly, Superbike is talking with different countries to find out exactly what the possibilities are, and obviously we are going to do the same thing as for MotoGP: when we know exactly the situation and the calendars and the possibilities of organizing events in different countries we will announce the new schedule. In the agreement with the Government of Andalusia and the city of Jerez we include a WorldSBK race weekend »
The plan in Jerez is to organize the WorldSBK round after the Grand Prix. Could this be the same for other circuits or is it only for Jerez?
« In WorldSBK we have the same situation as MotoGP: the first thing is to have permission to race and then we can see which races can take place, in the days before… Everything is open, like in MotoGP, but we plan to start as soon as possible and we think it will be mid or end of July in Europe. There is Superbike in Argentina, we have to think about it, but we still intend to have more or less the same schedule, in terms of confirmation, as in MotoGP. So we think that by the beginning of June we will have a clearer idea of what we can do with both »
