MotoGP issues new revised Saturday schedule for Argentina GP
As MotoGP’s missing freight edges closer to South America, the Argentinian GP race organisers have issued a new schedule for the event.
The Saturday action will now start at 08:15 local time (that’s 12:15 BST, or 13:15 CET), and only Moto3 and Moto2 will run in the morning.
Since it is the MotoGP teams who require the most amount of time to set up, and are most affected by the freight delay that has been the story of the weekend so far, it has been decided that the premier class sessions should be delayed until the afternoon.
The revised schedule will see Moto3 FP1 get underway at the aforementioned 08:15 and running until 09:05. All of Saturday’s free practice sessions for the intermediate and lightweight classes will run for the same, 50-minute, length.
In comparison, MotoGP will have two, one-hour, practice sessions in the afternoon, and their FP4 session (which, for this weekend, would have been FP3) has been cancelled.
After the first Moto3 session ends at 09:05, it will be followed by Moto2 FP1 at 09:20; then Moto3 FP2 at 10:25; and Moto2 FP2 at 11:30.
The MotoGP riders will first get out on track at 12:35, and then Moto3 qualifying will begin at 13:50. After the standard two Moto3 qualifying sessions, Moto2 will qualify from 14:45 to 15:25. Following that, MotoGP will be back out on track at 15:40 for the second of their hour-long practice sessions.
Theoretically, that second session for MotoGP should be the most representative of race conditions. However, it will begin one hour later than the race is scheduled to start on Sunday.
After FP2, there will be a 25-minute break - the longest gap between sessions all day - before MotoGP Q1 gets underway. There will also only be 10 minutes between MotoGP Q1 and MotoGP Q2, rather than the usual 15 minutes, which will place extra importance in getting through Q1 cleanly - or avoiding it all together - so as to not compromise Q2.
Now MotoGP has its latest revision of the revised schedule, all it needs is for the freight to finally arrive, and the teams can then set to work on what will probably be the longest day at the track of the season - or they will probably hope so, anyway.
The full schedule can be viewed by clicking on the 'Schedule & Results' tab at the top of the home page on MotoGP's official website, here.
