MotoGP tomorrow returns to action with its Qatar season-opening race with top names predicting this season promises to be the most competitive ever.
Doha’s night-time desert event is to raise the curtain on 19 races this year, which takes in Thailand for the first time and ends in Valencia, Spain in November.
Nine-time world champion Valentino Rossi said as many as 10 riders are in with a title chance and that it is the most competitive grid he has seen, as he begins his 23rd season.
Photo: EPA
“I think this season is the most balanced of MotoGP seasons ever,” Rossi, 39, who will be the oldest rider this year, told reporters at a joint news conference on Thursday. “I think minimum all these guys on the table [four-time MotoGP champion Marc Marquez, Andrea Dovizioso, Maverick Vinales, Johann Zarco and Andrea Iannone] plus Dani Pedrosa, Alex Rins [have a chance at the title]. So, I think more or less eight, nine or 10 at the minimum.”
Marquez is aiming for a third successive elite class world championship — and if he wins it will be the eighth time in nine years a Spanish rider has claimed the world crown — but he is expected to come under increasing pressure this season.
These include last year’s second placed Dovizioso of Italy and Vinales, another Spaniard, who finished third last year, as well as the perennial challenge from Rossi, who on Thursday signed a new two-year contract with Yamaha.
Nine of the 24 riders in this year’s MotoGP have won races.
Asked for his pre-season prediction, six-time world champion Marquez was reluctant to pick out a challenger.
“It’s impossible to say, I don’t want to say a name,” the Honda rider said. “We start in a better way than last year, we have a good pace.”
Dovizioso was more candid.
“We are very close. We are minimum five, six riders able to win the championship,” the Italian said. “So, anything can happen.”
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