Curve five of the Autodromo do Algarve on site, photographed by us in postcard weather during a break, with the pit area in the background and the huge main grandstand behind it. After Losail and Spielberg, the third MotoGP double race is now planned for the second Corona season, but in this case it is not on two consecutive weekends.

Next shift in the calendar puzzle from FIM & Dorna

Now the race at Phillip Island has been finally cancelled and, as a consequence, the Malaysian Grand Prix has been postponed a week compared to the original plan. Because before that the World Cup run in BuriRam in neighbouring Thailand is on the program, a very sensible modification. Only these two events are still considered quite questionable, which also applies to Mandalika on the island of Lombok at the WSBK, as well as the event in Argentina. The latter station with the GP of Las Termas de Rio Hondo remained undated for the MotoGP after the early cancellation in spring. There will be a second race in Portugal for the first time in history, which should be a positive surprise for Fabio Quartararo. As the only MotoGP and WSBK portal to our knowledge, we sharply criticized the first calendar after publication by Dorna and described it as unrealistic. Today shows again how right we were with that.

The Autodromo do Algarve in the hinterland of the coastal city of Portimão is considered to be one of the most demanding courses of all, with numerous blind spots and a lot of ups and downs, apart from the long start-finish straight, there is hardly any breather for the riders.

The new combined provisional calendar from MotoGP and WorldSBK

As before, despite numerous cancellations and changes, it is still a temporary solution. The reason is that FIM and Dorna came up with a plan in November 2020 as if there wasn’t a pandemic or if it was going to go away through the back door. Due to this completely naive view, various corrections were necessary because, as expected, the situation did not calm down. Both travel and virus experts had predicted this from spring 2020, but like the majority of humanity, those responsible for the motorcycle world championships did not want to admit it. All data and events entered in bold below relate to changes and the event in italics, which are still considered very questionable. One downer is the overlap between MotoGP and the near-series World Championship, which is marked in red below, even if there are no problems in terms of timing.

Our recording of the impressive view of the main grandstand of the Autodromo do Algarve – this is exactly what it looked like at the start of Europe this spring, when no spectators were allowed and the access to the track was cordoned off for unauthorized persons.