LEWIS HAMILTON ASKS F1 CHIEFS FOR "EPIC" MOTOGP MOVE AFTER £3.5BN DEAL STRUCK

Lewis Hamilton wants MotoGP to join the billing on some Formula 1 race weekends to create an "epic" schedule of motorsport action.

Liberty Media has owned the commercial rights to F1 since 2017 and earlier this month confirmed it will add MotoGP to its portfolio. The American firm's £3.5billion purchase of an 86 percent stake in parent company Dorna Sports is expected to complete later this year.

And Dorna sporting director Carlos Ezpeleta fuelled the the idea of hosting joint race weekends involving action from both series. "It is not in the immediate plans and it's not something that we are working on, but it's not something that we are ruling out for the medium-term future either," he said.

Hamilton is a MotoGP fan - he and motorbike racing legend Valentino Rossi swapped machinery at a 2019 track day which was seen as a historic moment in motorsport. Naturally, he would love to share the billing with Liberty's newest purchase on some weekends in the future.

He said: "I think Liberty has done an amazing job with Formula 1, obviously the value of the thing [rising since 2017]. So, I think they can do a great job with MotoGP. It's exciting because I love MotoGP. It would be epic if we can have them on the same weekend."

He went on to joke: "Maybe I could do a race in MotoGP and race a Formula 1 car on the same weekend - that would be really cool," though admitted that it would be "impossible" to arrange.

A shared F1-MotoGP race weekend would only realistically be possible at circuits which already host both championships. But, as Ezpeleta said, there are currently no plans to make it happen any time soon.

And, as he went on to point out, such an undertaking would be a logistical and financial nightmare. He added: "The reality is that it makes limited sense, because at the end of the day we have some events with our own fan base, which is a different fan base in most places to the Formula 1 fan base.

"They sell, they sell out in many circuits and so do we, so getting all of us together in the same event, in the same weekend, has difficulties and the return on investment is not very clear today. Then you also have problems with the different sponsors, the TV cameras.

"So it is a project, or it would be a rather complicated project, let's say. Then again, there are a number of circuits that can run both [series], but there are not so many, so it is a project that is not discarded, but we are not working on it either."

2024-04-17T11:10:30Z dg43tfdfdgfd