Pramac Ducati rider Johann Zarco has suggested that MotoGP’s new weekend format risks contributing to the ongoing uptick in injuries across the first two rounds of the championship in 2023.
And it’s not even the headline change – the addition of a Saturday sprint race – that Zarco has singled out as a potential culprit.
The most recent race of the championship in Argentina saw only 17 of the 22 permanent riders on the grid line up at Termas de Rio Hondo, with Marc Marquez, Miguel Oliveira, Joan Mir, Pol Espargaro and Enea Bastianini all sidelined due to injury.
And while the added pressure of an increase of 50% of the number of racing laps and the tension of an extra race start every weekend has led to many attributing the unusual injury toll to the sprint races, some of the falls have also taken place outside those two races and are harder to blame on the change in format.
For Zarco, the added stress that comes not only with the extra racing but also with the whole new schedule has been a contributing factor.
This was something blamed for Pol Espargaro’s fall at the opening race in Portimao in particular (a crash that may well see him sitting out the entire first half of the year) – the Spaniard crashed on Friday afternoon while chasing a fast time on a cooling track in FP2, now one of only two sessions that determines who heads directly to Q2.
And while the Frenchman absolutely isn’t opposed to the extra race on every single weekend of the championship’s 21-round calendar, he’s keenly aware of what it means for riders – and believes the balance isn’t being struck correctly.
“The sprint race is very interesting,” he explained, “and really to prepare the race of Sunday you get so many informations. You have this pleasure to fight with the others, and when you have the power to fight you get even more fun. This is good.
“It’s true with the Saturday, to have the focus to have good qualifying and then switch a bit the mind to be ready for the race is asking a lot.
“It’s good to change this to have more show, and that’s fine. It’s true that we also, as riders on the sporting side, we enjoy it a lot.
“But something that is a bit wrong is that they’re asking more on the side of the track. They forget that we have to get concentrated to race a bike at more than 300 kilometres an hour.”
The whole issue is, according to him, best exemplified by the addition of an extra fan meet and greet session.
This is separate to another activity, a rider parade on Sunday morning that slots in alongside a reduced warm-up session.
The fan meet-and-greet – the so-called ‘Hero Walk’ – has been a Sunday activity up to now but will take place on Saturday this weekend in the lead-up to FP3.
“On a Saturday morning,” Zarco explained, “it will be mandatory to go and see the fans 15 minutes before going on the bike, and this I do not agree with. Because it is mandatory, maybe we will get penalties if we don’t do it.
“We have to remember that even if we have FP3 in the morning, a practice session, it’s still a bike going at more than 300 kph on tracks that are sometimes difficult to race on – like here in Austin, which is the most difficult of the year.
“For this we have to think that it’s good to make a show, but we do that on the bike.
“We need time to concentrate, so to make mandatory something 15 minutes before going on the bike is maybe the reason why there is more stress, [which can mean] more accidents, more injuries on the track.”
