Capirossi: Riders will have final say on racing in wet

MotoGP Safety Commission representative Loris Capirossi says the cancellation of qualifying on Saturday in Qatar was unavoidable.

The decision was made due to standing water on the track and grid positions for Sunday's season-opening race will be decided by combined free practice lap times, meaning a front row of Maverick Vinales, Andrea Iannone and Marc Marquez.

With more rain forecast in the morning, a question mark remains over tomorrow's schedule and Capirossi revealed a lack of drainage at the Losail International Circuit is posing the biggest problem.

The former 250cc world champion tested on a wet track in February and said in his opinion, it could be possible to race in the wet. However, Capirossi reiterated that any final decision over whether not racing goes ahead in wet conditions would be left to the riders.

"We decided to come here in February to understand the situation because never did anyone test on the night time with rain. But like I want to explain, I tested when the full track was wet, it is different the conditions [today]," he said at a press conference on Saturday evening.

"I say all the time when I test it was not too bad but we have to give the opportunity to all riders to test. But the decision always is coming from the riders and they decide if it is safe or not - I don't decide that. This is why we give the opportunity to riders to test and check the conditions.

"Secondly after the experience we had today, day or night, it's impossible to race on rain without drainage and it's not different, day or night. Also during the day when we have a lot of water, no drainage, and the track is difficult to ride. But this is not because we are in Qatar: we have the same problem in Malaysia, or Jerez or Misano. Every track is the same, when we have a lot of water we have to cancel."

The 44-year-old Italian said the only decision available in the circumstances on Saturday was to call off qualifying due to safety concerns.

"For us as well it was not really an easy day. We tried to do the practice tonight and postpone always to try to understand the situation of the track," he said.

"We were thinking we could resolve but in the end we understand that the problem is bigger than what we thought and we decided to cancel everything.

"I think the main problem of the track is that we don't have any drainage because normally we don't expect the rain in Qatar. We discovered [this], especially during the Moto2 and Moto3 test and especially today with the conditions. For sure we are thinking about doing some work for next season but until now the situation is like that," Capirossi added.

"Regarding tomorrow we decided to increase a little bit the warm-up for all three classes, 30 minutes for each class, and we really hope to have good weather because tonight we still want to work and try to resolve the problem."

Capirossi said any prospect of running qualifying in the morning on Sunday was ruled out in order to give the organisers the best possible chance of preparing the circuit for the possibility of racing later in the evening.

"We can monitor that [weather] but unfortunately it is not really good for the morning and it looks like tomorrow morning we have some rain. From 11am it looks like stopping and for all afternoon it may be good, we hope, but we can't control the weather," he said.

"Tomorrow morning we didn't decide to have the qualifying because we need to work all day to try to have the best conditions for the track for late afternoon and night.

"In the run-off area of turn 8 we have a mini-lake; the problem is without drainage the water is coming up from the bottom. We tried to take off the water with a pump but when we think it is good, after ten minutes it is the same. This is why we never resolved the problem. Now the situation is a little bit better but still now the track is not ready.

"For sure, next year we want to do some work for drainage and we want to organise, especially on the last day of testing, the last half hour or 40 minutes, we will again we the track and give the opportunity to everybody to test it."

Capirossi also admitted that moving the race to Monday could be an option if racing is not possible on Sunday.

"In case tomorrow we don't have a lot of water on the track at night time we can send a rider out to try to understand the situation. You can imagine we have a spray of rain and the rider goes out and says it is acceptable, we can race and do everything as normal," he said.

"In case we have a lot of rain, for me it is impossible and if we have a disaster like today, we can find different solutions. [If] we cancel, normally we don't want to, but maybe we can go on Monday like 2009."