MotoGP Announce Cancellation of German, Finnish GPs, Dutch TT

The MotoGP World Championship has announced that three European races for the 2020 season have been cancelled. 

The German Grand Prix, the Dutch TT and the – previously new for 2020 – Finnish Grand Prix at the KymiRing have all been scratched from the 2020 MotoGP calendar. 

This is particular news, compared to previous schedule changes and announcements made by the championship and Dorna, because these are the first races to be outright cancelled, rather than postponed.

This means that Dorna is running out of space to fit certain races into what is going to be an incredibly hectic schedule at the end of this year – should racing get going.

The news is of course negative, and casts further doubt over whether fans will see any racing at all from MotoGP this year, however with national governments extending bans on mass gatherings and travel restrictions – in the case of some, such as the Netherlands, until the end of the summer – it was inevitable that some races would have to be chopped, and these three – as the chronological first races on the original calendar to not yet be postponed and the last before the summer break – were the prime candidates, especially after so many races had already been pushed to the autumn.

Yet, there is reason to be hopeful about racing in 2020. Formula One has announced that it intends to begin its season in Austria in the beginning of July. One-and-a-half months later is the Austrian round of MotoGP, and should F1 be able to host a round at the Red Bull Ring, it could theoretically be possible for MotoGP to do the same.

Of course, the situation with the current global pandemic remains to be a fast-changing one, so predicting what the world will look like and whether racing can happen in two or three months is difficult, and realistically quite pointless. 

But it is worth remembering that just over two months ago, the MotoGP riders finished their final preseason test in Qatar and were ready to start the season. Much has changed in the two months from then to now that has led to the aforementioned cancellations and postponements, but just as much has changed in the past two months, so it can change in the two months forthcoming. 

Changes could be positive or negative, and whilst there appears to be some trend on social media to be gravely negative about racing in 2020, such negativity serves no purpose. Similarly, undue positivity is equally inaccurate, since the reality remains that of two months ago – that nobody really knows.