Here is the thing, as The Race reports: MotoGP is completely rewriting how a race weekend shakes out for 2027, introducing an extra qualifying session and giving the sprint race its very own, separate grid order. The championship argues this revised setup balances an incredible spectacle for fans and new stakes in each session with well-balanced track time for riders, teams and factories.
Under the current weekend schedule, the hour-long second practice on Friday counts for automatic participation in Q2 for the 10 fastest riders - with the other two spots decided in Q1 on Saturday. But the Friday order will now be separated entirely from Q1/Q2 for the grand prix. Instead, it will serve to form the sprint grid.
This has been formalised alongside splitting up the hour-long practice session into a 30-minute 'Free Practice 2' and a subsequent 15-minute sprint qualifying - which is largely equivalent to how the current hour-long practice plays out, albeit with the loss of 15 minutes of track time. Also reduced is the Saturday morning practice session, now set to run under the 'Free Practice 3' moniker - for 20 minutes rather than the current 30.
The big change is that, unlike under the current format, all participating riders will go into the Q1 session (rather than just those who missed the cut on Friday). All 12 Q2 spots will be decided in Q1.
There is more, because there will no longer be a 10-minute MotoGP warm-up session to start the day's grand prix activities. MotoGP says this will be offset pre-race (after Moto3 and Moto2) by pitlane opening for 10 minutes for multiple sighting laps, giving riders the opportunity for a shakedown ahead of lights out.
