Some interesting points about the wild-card riders for 2023. I find it a brilliant concept as a full gate is always nice to see, and it is good to see some of those guys who deserve to race Grand Prix, but can't afford it if their team don't do GP. Previously it cost 1000euro to enter, so this much cheaper route for guys who are not full time GP racers.

As Jorge Prado said on the Saturday after his qualification win, some of the wild card guys in Argentina were very slow, but of course, we expect to have many guys in Italy, France and some other countries being quicker than many of the regular/full time Grand Prix riders.

“Obviously it wasn’t very easy as after just a few laps I was catching lapped riders,” Prado told me. “There are some riders who are a lot slower than us, they are very slow. I hope tomorrow they make some changes for that and we can see more blue flags, because today I didn’t see more than two. Hopefully they can do something about that, because it is very dangerous and I hope tomorrow we can have a safer race. “

The good news on the wild card riders, at least what I was told, they pay 300euro per round and included in that were three paddock passes, so if you are a fan and can race, get in and collect your three paddock passes for a rather good price and then you get to try and qualify as well. Well, anything is possible.

I was also told that wild card entries for Sardinia are not brilliant, but Switzerland and some of the other rounds are full. All Grand Prix tracks are only homologated for 52 riders at a time and some rounds will in fact have that full entries of 52 riders (that is the regular 30 or so from the regular teams and the rest made up of wild cards), which is great news, because as we know from many major motocross countries like Australia and Great Britain have really struggled filling the gates in recent years.

The AMA Nationals is similar to this concept, with a cheap entry cost and what we see in the AMA Nationals is a bunch of guys well off the pace, not as bad as Argentina, but probably worse than places like Italy, France and Holland.