David Alonso and Ryusei Yamanaka face the penultimate race of the season with intact ambition

The World Championship travels to Qatar but it's not for the inaugural race of the season. Since 2007, the Losail track has been loyal to its date with the top motorcycling competition, always at the beginning of the year, even in 2020, when only Moto3 and Moto2 could compete there at the beginning of the pandemic. In 2023, and for the first time in almost twenty years, it has been necessary to wait until November, until the penultimate race of the season, to compete in Qatar. Moto3 riders will travel there this weekend after having completed the Malaysian Grand Prix and having defined a bit more the top positions of the standings. David Alonso and Dani Holgado could not score points in Sepang, and Deniz Öncü only took five, what almost mathematically rules him out of the fight for the title. Jaume Masià and Ayumu Sasaki, two of the only three current riders who were already in Moto3 in Qatar in 2018, six seasons ago, arrive to Losail separated by thirteen points and with everything still to be decided, although Masià could secure the title if he is able to score twelve more points than Sasaki. This means finishing at least in the top four and waiting for the Japanese rider's result.

GASGAS Aspar Team faces the first grand prix in Qatar that will be held in November with David Alonso and Ryusei Yamanaka's ambition intact. The Colombian remains third in the standings despite the DNF in Malaysia, and although he still has mathematical options to fight for the title, the 41-points disadvantage will be complicated to overcome as he will compete again at an unknown track for him. He will try to jump on the podium, as some other riders of the team who went later to win the title, such as Álvaro Bautista, Gabor Tálmacsi, Julián Simón, Nico Terol and Albert Arenas. Only Izan Guevara missed out on the Qatar GP podium in 2022, the only year of the Moto3 era in which the champion did not get a podium finish in Losail.

David Alonso: “We have two challenging races ahead of us and we face them with the same ambition. I arrive in Qatar in good conditions despite the two crashes in Malaysia, where we couldn't get a good result, but where we kept on learning. I hope that Dani Holgado, Diogo Moreira and Riccardo Rossi can be in good shape in this new GP after Sunday's crash in Sepang.”

Ryusei Yamanaka: “The Losail circuit is one of my favourites. We will focus on improving our race pace and getting a bike set-up with which I can feel comfortable from the first practice.”