Circuito do Estoril -the second round of the WorldSBK takes place here just one week after the start of the season, while the MotoGP Italian Grand Prix is on the calendar in Mugello. The most important events do not take place at the same time.

How do you reconcile MotoGP and WorldSBK?

With its planning chaos, Dorna laid an egg itself at the two championships. For the spectators, the double program with the Italian GP and the WSBK event in Estoril would only have been a problem if someone had wanted to watch the races on site. Fortunately, because no spectators at all, except for a few privileged people, are not a problem for fans from home thanks to the time difference in Portugal compared to Italy. At least as far as the most important events are concerned, you can switch back and forth alternately. The FP3, which is relatively unimportant at the WSBK in relation to the MotoGP, can be saved. Only the Supersport race coincides with the start of MotoGP. Below are the two schedules as evidence.

Our priorities are already set

As far as our Live Blog is concerned, Friday belongs to MotoGP because there may already be a starting grid in Mugello. On Saturday the WSBK has priority for us, after all the first two races are already taking place. Normally there would be three, but the WSSP 300 junior class has a break in Portugal. For on Sunday we have also decided on the near-series world championship. So we from MotoGP will probably only give a summary this time on the two weekend days. We are excited to see how the broadcasters who want to handle both at the same time will handle it. Especially in the event that there should be postponements due to unforeseeable events. Below is the WorldSBK calendar, where the season has just started in Aragon and continues a week later in Estoril.

Phillip Island has already been finally cancelled and there should not be a date in spring 2021. The dates in Argentina and Indonesia are currently still in jeopardy.
Carmelo Ezpeleta on a photo from 1992 – the man is roughly the opposite of Jonathan Rea, who appears very reserved in his private life and prefers to come into the hotel through the supplier or side entrance. The Spaniard, on the other hand, sits, as we have already seen, directly at the main entrance, where everyone can see him. At every suitable or unsuitable opportunity, he puts himself in the limelight and likes to be the centre of attention at all times, self-praise is not alien to the mid-seventies. We owe him and his people primarily for this year’s calendar chaos. Because they failed to come up with a sensible plan last winter, there are constant changes and uncertainties this season
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The MotoGP calendar and the overlap with WSBK

It was a plan that FIM and Dorna published on November 6, 2020, which could not work that way. That was already clear to every viewer when Argentina was originally on the calendar as Round 2 and Texas immediately afterwards. In the meantime there have already been numerous plan changes for MotoGP and WorldSBK and more are currently to be expected. The overseas races in particular are at least partially very unrealistic. The following is the combined calendar with MotoGP and WSBK, in red letters the overlaps that have arisen in the meantime, which is particularly unfavourable in the media for the near-series world championship. There are now five of them and this is all thanks to FIM and Dorna, because they completely ignored the existence of the corona pandemic and mutations when they were originally planned. The two lowest cases, in which the WSBK and MotoGP overlap, are rather uncritical due to the time differences. In terms of public attention, however, they are definitely problematic.