That cathedral in the desert, also known as the Losail International circuit, will see this year’s Qatar GP opening round held over four nights instead of the usual three nights.
While the floodlit Qatar GP is by contract (until 2016) the season opener, there have been a rash of complaints by riders regarding the numerous crashes caused by the night humidity and moisture coming through the track surface and plenty of requests that the races be rescheduled much earlier in the evening.
The solution that Dorna has come up is that the practice sessions will be spread out over an extra day, that way all three classes will have more consistent temperatures during practice sessions, and be more similar to track and temperatures conditions at the times when the races are actually run.
The schedule now consists of the 125cc and Moto2 classes having both FP1 and FP2 on Thursday, while MotoGP gets only FP1.
MotoGP gets two sessions, FP2 and FP3 on Friday with the two remaining classes holding FP3.
Saturday is dedicated to qualifying, but weirdly enough the 125cc and Moto2 classes will hold their race warm ups, directly after qualifying and the day before the races!New Qatar GP schedule after the jump.
Thursday – March 17th18:00-18:40 – 125cc Free Practice 118:55-19:40 – Moto2 Free Practice 119:55-20:40 – MotoGP Free Practice 120:55-21:35 – 125cc Free Practice 221:50-22:35 – Moto2 Free Practice 2Friday – March 18th18:00-18:45 – MotoGP Free Practice 219:00-19:40 – 125cc Free Practice 319:55-20:40 – Moto2 Free Practice 320:55-21:40 – MotoGP Free Practice 3Saturday – March 19th18:00-18:40 – 125cc Qualifying18:55-19:40 – Moto2 Qualifying19:55-20:55 – MotoGP Qualifying21:20-21:40 – 125cc Warm Up21:55-22:15 – Moto2 Warm UpSunday – March 20th18:00-18:20 – MotoGP Warm Up19:00 – 125cc Race (18 laps)20:15 – Moto2 Race (20 laps)22:00 – MotoGP Race (22 laps)