The coronavirus pandemic has led to the cancellation of the inaugural round of MotoGP as Qatar has brought into force restrictions on people travelling into the country. The premier class will not race in the inaugural round, however, the Moto3 and Moto2 class will go racing as teams are already present in the country, having completed winter testing just yesterday. Scheduled between March 20th – 22nd, the threat also looms over the Thai GP as it is being said that the second round will be postponed. There is no official word, yet, if this cancellation and postponement will shift both these rounds to a later date.
The premier class will be unable to go racing at the Qatar GP as the country has announced travel restrictions, which affect passengers travelling from Italy and around the globe, into Qatar. Starting today, all passengers arriving at Doha on flights from Italy, or anybody who has stayed in Italy in the past two weeks, will be taken to quarantine for a minimum of two weeks. Since the inaugural round at Losail is scheduled for the coming weekend, FIM, IRTA and Dorna have announced the cancellation of all premier class sessions at the Grand Prix of Qatar.
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Prior to this, premier class teams tested a new tyre compound during the two, pre-season testing sessions at Sepang and Losail. The new compound seems to be favouring Yamaha machines, where all the young riders of the Japanese teams topped the timesheets during both sessions. After a positive start at Sepang, Valentino Rossi had a not so good testing session at Qatar and fears that the new compound will lead to the repetition of his previous year’s woes, where the veteran rider struggled with race pace for the lack of rear grip in the second half of the race.
Still recovering from his shoulder operation, reigning champion Marc Marquez struggled with the 2020 Honda machine during testing and so did all other Honda riders, who found the machine even more difficult to ride, compared to last year. Such was the struggle, the Spanish rider even tried out Nakagami’s 2019 satellite bike for comparison, which was spray-painted at the last minute in factory colours. However, at the end of testing, Marquez was happy with the progress made. The wait for MotoGP fans to witness the red lights go off could be seriously long, as the virus outbreak has been spreading its tentacles fast and the World is yet to find a way to contain it.