Luca Marini has urged MotoGP organizers to restructure the championship calendar and allow for a longer winter break, but says reducing the number of races isn’t necessary.
With the 2026 MotoGP season running from late February through the end of November, riders and teams get less than two months off before pre-season testing for 2027 begins. Marini believes this non-stop schedule leaves riders with “zero time” to recover or prepare for the next season.
“For me, the course of events over the year is not ideal,” Marini told Speedweek. “I think we should put the races closer together and try to create a bigger window in the winter.”
The Honda HRC rider explained that the lack of downtime makes it difficult to fully recover from injuries or make physical improvements. “There is no time to improve further… I need all the energy to be ready—but I would like to have more time to work out old injuries even more concretely, for example. I would also like to improve physically from season to season, but that takes time for specific physio programmes.”
Instead of cutting races, Marini proposes condensing the schedule to keep the race count high while giving riders and teams the much-needed off-season to rest, recover, and prepare for the next campaign.
