MotoGP promoters Dorna Sports announced a provisional 2023 calendar on Friday morning in Thailand, including maiden visits for the series to Kazakhstan and India while Aragon has been dropped.
The new schedule sees several significant changes, with the headlines being the incorporation of the recently-announced Kazakhstan and Indian Grand Prix’, with the former set to go ahead in early July as an effective replacement for the financially-troubled Finnish event while the latter is set to get underway in late September in the date that the Aragon GP usually fills – though both still remain subject to homologation.
The Spanish event will therefore fall away from the calendar for the first time since its inception back in 2010, though it may return in future in an alteration deal with the Catalan GP – which has now moved from its traditional June date to early September after the British and Austrian encounters following the summer break.
Further significant changes seen on the provisional calendar regard the dates of the Indonesian and Qatar GP’s, which move from being the first two races of the year to the end of October and November respectively – with the Portuguese event in Portimao now hosting the season opener as previously announced.
The change to Qatar’s scheduled date marks the first time since 2007 that the Lusail International Circuit event hasn’t hosted the season opener.
The season closer will continue to be taken care of by Valencia as it has for the past decade or so, with the European season races all effectively moving two spots up the timing order as a result of fewer early flyaway contests.
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