until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
Dorna has confirmed that a member of its team tested positive for coronavirus on Saturday morning but remains asymptomatic.
He was isolated in his hotel on Saturday morning after the result of his test, and remains in quarantine along with all close contacts.
As a precautionary measure, the series took the decision to test anyone who had been in secondary contact with the individual and each of them has returned a negative result.
The test result means that a number of personnel isolated in their hotel and unable to perform their roles at the track, with French TV broadcaster Canal+ believed to be the worst-affected so far.
Staff allowed into the circuit were required to be tested within four days of arriving at Brno, then to self-isolate between their test and arriving to their socially-distanced team bubble at the track.
Dorna has also been organising further tests on-site this weekend to allow access to next weekend’s back-to-back race at the Red Bull Ring, and it’s believed that it is one of those tests that has been marked as positive.
That raises concerns about the paddock’s safety, should secondary testing show the first not to be a false positive, as this would mean that the potentially-infectious individual has slipped through the paddock screening and has been inside the paddock bubble for three or four days.
When contacted about the news, a Dorna representative did not dismiss the rumours but said that the organisation was awaiting secondary testing results, presumably to rule out a false positive, and would comment when that information was available.
It is believed that this is the first positive test so far recorded by MotoGP, although Dorna has yet to move in line with other championships and release figures on the number of tests conducted and passed to date.
