Four men changed the MotoGP weekend on 7 October. The Grand Prix Commission's decisions of that date, issued from Mies by a commission of Paul Duparc (FIM), Mike Webb (IRTA), Biense Bierma (MSMA) and the chairman, Carmelo Ezpeleta, give the Sprint and the Grand Prix separate grids from 2027. Since Saturday Sprints arrived in 2023, as Crash.net put it the same day, "both grids have been set by a single Saturday morning qualifying."

Two grids is the headline. The larger change sits on Friday afternoon, and in who was in the room when it was agreed.

What Friday stops deciding

Today the session that matters on Friday is Practice. MotoGP's own weekend guide of 29 October 2025 describes it as a "60-minute session timed for entry into Qualifying 2", and this season's timetables still run it for an hour. The top ten skip Q1 altogether. A rider who gets Friday right buys a shorter, safer Saturday morning.

The 2027 format announced on motogp.com keeps the 45-minute FP1 and replaces Practice with a 30-minute FP2 that is "not timed for entry into any other session." Friday then closes with a 15-minute Sprint Qualifying for every rider, and that session alone sets Saturday's Sprint grid. The Friday time that decides anything falls from 60 minutes to 15, and what it decides changes from a shortcut into Q2 to a starting position. The commission's document calls the trade "a reduction in practice track time to offset the new session."

Nobody is spared Q1

Saturday opens with a 20-minute FP3, then two 15-minute qualifying sessions for the Grand Prix. "All riders will take part in Q1 before the top 12 graduate to Q2," the decisions read, with Q2 deciding "pole position and the front four rows." The title contender who topped Friday no longer waits in the garage while the back of the field fights for two places; in 2027 he queues with them. The Sprint follows later that day, from Friday's grid.

A rider can now start the two races from different places, which ends a sentence MotoGP has used to explain its own format. Its Sprint explainer, dated 3 November 2025, quotes Carlos Ezpeleta: "The qualifying on Saturday will decide the grid for both the Sprint race and Sunday." That holds for the six race weekends left in 2026, Mandalika included.

Alex Márquez counted the cost in sessions rather than minutes. "I don't love it, because in the end there are 22 races, 22 sprints and two qualifying sessions per weekend," he said, in Motorsport.com's round-up of rider reactions on 8 October.

Sunday loses its rehearsal

The 10-minute Warm Up goes. In its place the pit lane opens for ten minutes before the MotoGP Grand Prix, "allowing multiple sighting laps," in the commission's wording. The track time survives; a timed session in which a crew can change something before the race does not.

Francesco Bagnaia backs the format with this one exception. Quoted by Crash.net at Mandalika, the first race weekend after the decision, he called the change "an improvement" and said riders "were always asking for two starting [grids] and not just one." Then: "I think we cannot do a race without doing some laps before."

Who said yes

The Grand Prix Commission has no rider among its four members. Riders were consulted through the Safety Commission, and Bagnaia described that meeting to GPOne on 8 October: "Overall, there were four of us; we asked, we received a thorough answer, and we were in agreement." Luca Marini, also at that meeting according to Motorsport.com, called the format "a proposal from the teams to further improve the show and try to gain popularity."

Riders who were not in that meeting heard it differently. Jorge Martín, who arrived at Mandalika leading the championship by two points, told Crash.net at Mandalika: "But I feel they don't even ask us." Marc Márquez, two points behind him going into that weekend, went further: "With the [current] schedule, it's enough. But we don't decide. It is what it is, and we must shut up." Pedro Acosta, per Motorsport.com: "It doesn't matter what we think, we haven't been given a choice."

Four riders were consulted and agreed; the rest learned the result from a document whose four names include no rider. The format arrives in 2027 alongside the new bikes, and the warm-up is the open item: the rider who backs the change has asked for it back, on the record, at Mandalika.