Dorna confirms that the Motorcycle World Championship will be held for the first time at the Sokol International Racetrack in Kazakhstan in September – India Grand Prix will not take place
The race calendar for the current 2024 MotoGP season has undergone a change for the second half of the season that had already become apparent. The premiere of the Grand Prix of Kazakhstan on the weekend of September 20-22 replaces the Grand Prix of India originally planned for this date.
The reason is that the local race organizer in India has not fulfilled its contractual obligations. The final deadline for outstanding payments to MotoGP promoter Dorna Sports has passed.
According to information from our colleagues at Motorsport.com Spain, the outstanding payments are not for the 2024 Grand Prix, but for 2023. Dorna officially announced on Wednesday that the 2024 Indian Grand Prix will not take place. The local organizer is now hoping for a date in March 2025.
In September 2023, the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida near New Delhi would have hosted the MotoGP premiere in India. This year, the second edition of the Indian Grand Prix should have taken place in the fall as the start of the Asian tour. However, this slot in the 2024 MotoGP calendar will now be taken by the Kazakhstan Grand Prix, which was originally scheduled for June.
The fact that the event will not be held at the brand new Sokol International Racetrack near Almaty on the weekend of June 14-16 is due to the recent flooding in Kazakhstan. For this reason, the originally planned date was canceled – with reference to the fact that the MotoGP premiere in Kazakhstan is to take place later in the season.
It is now certain that the cancellation of the 2024 Indian Grand Prix will give the promoters in Kazakhstan three months longer to prepare for their own first race weekend of the motorcycle world championship with the MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3 classes.
The Sokol International Racetrack, located in the south of the country around 75 kilometers northwest of Almaty, is a Grand Prix circuit designed by Herman Tilke. Construction work began back in 2014 and the facility has now been completed to the point where races can be held. Representatives from Dorna and the FIM have inspected the track several times in recent months.
The Grand Prix layout of the Sokol International Racetrack, which is used by the Motorcycle World Championship, has 13 corners on a track length of 4.495 kilometers. Driving is clockwise. The longest straight is not the start/finish straight, but the parallel back straight. At its end, there is the option of a chicane for other racing series.
According to the five-year contract concluded between the local race organizer and MotoGP promoter Dorna Sports, the Sokol International Racetrack should have been used for the first time in June 2023.
At that time, however, the Kazakhstan Grand Prix was canceled for 2023 just two months before the date because the track had not yet been homologated. Now, just over a year later, it has been homologated by both the FIM Motorcycle World Federation and the FIA Automobile World Federation (Grade 2).
Incidentally, there is also a town in Kazakhstan called Sokol. However, it is located in the very north of the country, almost 2,000 kilometers away from the Sokol International Racetrack.