Casey Stoner will be retiring after this weekend’s season final at Valencia, but the Repsol Honda rider couldn’t resist giving another barbed comment over Dorna’s politics which he hates and this time he turned his attention on the fact that the MotoGP calendar has four races in Spain.
The bristly Australian called the handling of championship ‘a joke’ stating that MotoGP is more an European championship than a world championship.
“It shouldn’t be races in 18 countries but not four races in one country.
I think that is overstepping the mark and, like I said, Portugal is just across the border.
There are too many in too close quarters.
I think it needs to branch out more like it used to be,” said Stoner yesterday at Valencia.
The 2012 calendar saw Europe hosting 12 of the 18 races, while the provisional 2013 calendar will have 19 races, 11 of which will be in Europe, while the Argentina GP that is to be scheduled for April 14th will be in all likelihood be cancelled until Spain’s Repsol and Argentina sort out their differences following the nationalization of Repsol’s subsidary YPF.
Two Spanish circuits (Aragon and Jerez) have already received a substantial discount on their sanctioning fees by Dorna in order to host MotoGP.