The event, which was supposed to debut on the Sokol circuit in April 2023 and was canceled at the time due to the construction work on the facility not yet completed, will not be able to debut this year either. The Kazakh race had been reinserted into the 2024 calendar, initially for July, before Dorna, the World Championship promoter, announced its postponement due to the flooding that has thrown the country into a weather emergency.
Shortly after, confirmation that September’s Indian Grand Prix would be suspended until 2025 prompted organisers to move the event to Kazakhstan for that weekend (September 20-22). But, once again, it looks like the former will not materialise this time either.
Dorna’s events department is now working against time to find a replacement, with the intention of being able to maintain a 20-race calendar. With the cancellations of Argentina and India, a third cancellation would reduce the calendar to just 19 events, three less than the 22 originally scheduled. Constraints with the television rights holders, among other obligations, push Dorna to maintain a calendar of no less than 20 races, which will not be easy.
The offices of the championship promoter are considering a series of options. The first to be considered was a repeat of the visit to Qatar, which opened the season this year at the beginning of March. This is due to Dorna’s excellent relationship with the Lusail circuit, which made its debut on the calendar in 2004 with a first daytime race. However, this route has presented a series of drawbacks that, at the moment, make its implementation very difficult.
The first is that no agreement appears to have been reached with the venue and local promoters, despite the horizon being clear until the last weekend of November, when Qatar is scheduled to host the Formula 1 Grand Prix. The other issue, highlighted by most teams, is the heat in mid-September, with average temperatures ranging from 29 degrees low to 29 degrees high. Motorsport.com understands that several drivers have been asked about this possibility and have concluded that it would be very difficult to race there. If they did, it would be at night.
With this background, Dorna executives are evaluating other possible alternative destinations. One that has reached the ears of the teams is, surprisingly, Brno, which hosted the Czech Grand Prix until 2021, when disagreements between the owners and the organization became insurmountable. One of the most controversial aspects, which makes the return to the Czech circuit more difficult, is the precarious state of the asphalt, which has been criticized in the past by all the riders. It remains to be seen whether the recent change of ownership (Shakai), who bought the complex from the Abraham family, can favor the return of Brno to MotoGP.
However, it will not be easy for the World Championship to return there, as one week after the slot to be filled (September 20-22), the Indonesian Grand Prix is scheduled in Lombok from September 27 to 29. If Kazakhstan’s replacement were to be a European circuit, the logistics would be very difficult.
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