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While most people thought that Enea getting P3 in the championship would end Marc’s streak of press conference 1 appearances, Thursday in Spielberg delivered a surprised with the top 4 in the championship invited in the first press conference.

Was it really a surprise or did it just follow the usual rules of Thursday media duties? Let’s take a look at what happened in 2023.

The press conference format has changed over the years in MotoGP, including the repartition of press conferences over the weekend (remember the Saturday meeting with the MotoGP front row and the Moto2 and Moto3 polemen?) or the set-up in which they are conducted (the number of people invited, moving from a table format to stools).

Since 2023, MotoGP has been organizing two half-hours press conferences on Thursday afternoon. I’ll only be looking at the details of what happened in 2023 for this article, although I can already tell that 2024 is following some of the same tendencies.

Two other weekends were a little different : Portugal, as the first round of the season, had a third press conference on Thursday while Thailand had a second press conference with 3 team managers and a third press conference with 3 Moto2 riders.

position in the championship	press con 1 appearances	press con 2 appearances	total
1	19	0	19
2	18	1	19
3	13	2	15
4	4	9	13
5	1	3	4
6	1	4	5
7	0	4	4
8	0	3	3
9	0	4	4
10	0	3	3
11	0	5	5
12	0	2	2
13	0	0	0
14	0	4	4
15	1	1	2
16	0	1	1
17	0	0	0
18	0	2	2
19	0	7	7

Participation depending on the championship position before the press conferences (table)

Participation depending on the championship position before the press conferences (chart)

Regarding press conference 1 :

The first two riders in the championships always participated except in Le Mans (Fabio Quartararo and Johann Zarco were invited for their home GP along with Pecco Bagnaia (P1) and Brad Binder (P3) while Marco Bezzecchi (P2) was in press conference 2).

In 17 rounds, the top 3 riders were present 14 times, the exceptions :

• France as mentioned above,
• Austria where Marco Bezzecchi (P3) was relegated to press conference 2 (press conference 1 had Brad Binder (P4, home GP of KTM) and Aleix Espargaro (P5, winner of the previous GP in Silverstone),
• Indonesia where Marco Bezzecchi (P3) wasn’t at the circuit yet following his collarbone injury at home.

The trio we saw the most was Pecco Bagnaia, Jorge Martin and Marco Bezzecchi. They shared 10 press conferences 1 between Sachsenring and Sepang.

Out of 9 press conferences 1 with 4 riders, the 4th rider in the championship was present 4 times (44% of the time).

Regarding press conference 2 :

Things get a little more hectic but we can identify a couple of trends in 16 rounds.

The riders doing well in the standings are often present :

• The 4th rider in the championship was present 9 times,
• Riders between P5 and P9 all appeared 3 or 4 times with both P5 and P6 places appearing in press conference 1 once.

Riders often get invited when it’s their home GP or the home GP of their team (adding to french riders being in press con 1 in Le Mans) :

• Miguel Oliveira in Portugal,
• Jake Dixon in Silverstone,
• Fabio Quartararo, Marc Marquez, Alex Rins and Takaaki Nakagami in Japan,
• Jack Miller in Australia.

(For that category, I consciously didn’t consider Spanish and Italian teams and riders because of the amount of them but it’s not a perfect science and we could argue it came in play for Marc Marquez and both Espargaro brothers to be invited in Barcelona, too, for example.)

Riders are invited when they have contract announcements that have been made in recent days. It’s something we can easily identify in the second half of the championship with the non-exhaustive following examples :

• Franco Morbidelli in Silverstone (leaving Yamaha) and India (joining Pramac),
• Luca Marini in San Marino (resigning with VR46) and Valencia (joining Honda) (news not 100% official yet but almost).

Then, you could also get an invite if you were coming back from injury (Enea Bastianini in Italy and Indonesia, Pol Espargaro in Silverstone, Alex Rins in Valencia) or if you had won the previous week while not being in the top of the championship (Alex Marquez in Austria after his Silverstone sprint win, Fabio Di Giannantonio in Valencia after his Qatar win).

And overall, something that I didn’t highlight but I will let you do the job yourself if you want : Dorna does have its favorites.

Press conferences participations per rider of the 2023 MotoGP grid

Only one rider from the 2023 MotoGP grid never appeared on a Thursday press conference (or any other conference, actually) and that’s Raul Fernandez.

Since Pecco Bagnaia always held the lead of the championship when arriving somewhere, he’s been present in every single press conference 1.

Then, the riders who have done the most press conferences are Marco Bezzecchi (16 appearances, P3 in the final standings) and Jorge Martin (15 appearances, P2 in the final standings). We continue with Fabio Quartararo and Marc Marquez, both with 12 appearances despite a respective P10 and P14 in the final standings. Brad Binder has 9 appearances and then everyone else has 7 or less.