Friday MotoGP practice in Brazil delayed, new schedule announced

MotoGP’s first Brazilian weekend since 2004 got off to a delayed start after more torrential rain soaked the Goiania circuit on Friday morning.

Parts of the track, which last hosted a motorcycle grand prix in 1989, were flooded earlier this week, with the clean-up adding to substantial last-minute construction work.

Friday morning’s heavy rain then forced the start of opening Moto3 practice to be postponed “due to track conditions”.

“At the moment we’re still working on a couple of corners around the track,” said Bartolome Alfonso, FIM MotoGP Safety Officer.

“Conditions are improving, and we hope to confirm in the next 25 minutes when we can open pit lane.”

Friday Schedule shortened

Moto3 FP1 will now start at 10:00am local time, which is one hour later than planned.

Moto2 then takes to the track from 11:00-11:50, followed by MotoGP FP1 from 12:05-13:05.

The new afternoon schedule sees Moto3 back from 14:15-14:50, Moto2 from 15:05-15:55 and finally MotoGP Practice - which decides direct access to Qualifying 2 - from 16:00-17:00.

That means the afternoon sessions have all been shortened to the normal Friday session length.

Due to the absence of any previous testing at Goiania, MotoGP was scheduled to have an extended 75-minute Friday afternoon session (as well as the longer one-hour FP1) to allow teams and riders to gather data.

However, the wet Friday conditions mean there is now only a limited opportunity to gather meaningful data and explore the expanded tyre allocation.

Should the wet Friday conditions continue, it will offer the likes of Yamaha - currently struggling with its new V4 - plus MotoGP rookies Toprak Razgatlioglu and home hero Diogo Moreira, a better chance of pulling off an upset and claiming direct Qualifying 2 access.