MotoGP champions Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Marquez are against a rumoured Formula One round at Assen as they believe it will ruin the Dutch track.
Speculation is rife in the Netherlands media that F1 owners Liberty is circling the Van Drenthe Circuit to stage a round of the series but the world fastest motorcycle racers are not so keen.
“I hope they don’t come. Formula One have a lot of track that they use just for the cars like Le Castellet last weekend and here Assen is just for motorcycle, like the history. First of all, it would be a particular track for Formula One but is better not to have it for us because of bumps,” said Rossi.
Lorenzo added: “First, I hope it doesn’t come here because of the bumps and secondly because they will have to modify so much the track. It will be better if Formula One doesn’t come.”
“Formula One here would be very fast, maybe the laptime would be one minute as there are very fast corners. For the bikes, it would mean some bumps,” said Marquez, who seemed less dead against it but still not keen.
F1 race director Charlie Whiting has visited the circuit and said that only small changes would need to be made including extra kerbstones, guardrails and Tecpro barriers at certain points around the track.
The circuit itself would not require any major changes so the layout could remain unchanged, something that is important because track chiefs had said they would not be interested in holding an F1 race if it had a negative impact on its hosting of the Dutch MotoGP event.