Dorna Sporting Director Carlos Ezpeleta has said that a joint weekend of F1 and MotoGP action “is not in the immediate plans” following Liberty Media’s acquisition of the MotoGP parent company.
Formula 1 owner Liberty Media confirmed its majority acquisition of Dorna Sports, parent company to MotoGP and World Superbikes, on Monday.
Now that Liberty Media has acquired MotoGP, the potential to have both the pinnacle of four and two-wheeled racing in one weekend could be on the cards.
However, Ezpeleta told Motorsport.com’s Spanish MotoGP Podcast that a combined race weekend between the two series is “something that at the moment, for obvious reasons, is not in the immediate plans.”
“It’s not something that we are working on, but it’s not something that we are ruling out for the medium-term future either.
“But having said that, the reality is that it makes limited sense, because at the end of the day we have some events with our own fan base, which is a different fan base in most places to the Formula 1 fan base.
“They sell, they sell out in many circuits and so do we, so getting all of us together in the same event, in the same weekend, has difficulties and the return on investment is not very clear today.
“Then you also have problems with the different sponsors, the TV cameras, so it is a project, or it would be a rather complicated project, let’s say.
“Then again, there are a number of circuits that can run both [series], but there are not so many, so it is a project that is not discarded, but we are not working on it either.”
MotoGP and Formula 1 sharing a race weekend would likely incur several logistical difficulties and Ezpeleta has ruled out chances of MotoGP and World Superbikes hosting a shared event for largely similar reasons.
Ezpeleta revealed that the financial aspect of hosting joint-race weekends would cause more harm than good for the company, highlighting that Liberty Media and Dorna could potentially miss out on money due to race venues having maximum attendance for one weekend.
Ezpeleta believes that both MotoGP and World Superbikes could attract similar numbers on separate weekends.
“It’s something that has been talked about for a long time and the reality, being very direct, I do not know the benefit,” he said.
“Clearly it would make exposure to Superbike more relevant, MotoGP I think would have little to do there.
“There is quite an important crossover of fans and I don’t know if the people who go to Montmelo for Superbikes… I think they also go to MotoGP.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense with both together because you are not going to attract more people and you have to pay for both things, Superbike and MotoGP, so it doesn’t make much sense at the moment.”
