FIM confident MotoGP entry will rise

MotoGP reduced practice and testing mileage, and introduced new component restrictions at the start of the year after Kawasaki withdrew from the championship as the worldwide recession took hold.

The new Hernando Ducati squad also dropped out halfway through the season, and the Hayate team that ran an ex-works Kawasaki this year is not expected to return for 2011 - although these losses will be balanced by the arrival of the Aspar team to run a Ducati and a possible additional satellite Honda, with LCR looking to expand.

More recently there have been moves to provide cheap engine leases to new teams from 2011 to encourage new chassis manufacturers into the field, and Ippolito believes this will bring the entry back to over 20.

"We had to modify some parts of the sporting and technical rules in agreement with the manufacturers and the teams," he said.

"We hope to be able to increase the number of riders in MotoGP as of 2011, while respecting the prototype concept of this championship. We should thus be able to introduce three or four additional riders on the starting grid of this class."

Ippolito believes the changes made this year have not only got motorcycle sport through this crisis, but have ensured is longer-term health.

"We were ready to go through 2009 with the world economic crisis in the background," he said. "During the last eight months we have been working in a close collaboration with all our promoters, manufacturers, sponsors, riders and all the participants in our sport as a whole.

"We are well aware of what is going on in each discipline in order to put in place some valid solutions which can ensure the permanence of the championships. "We are also trying to establish the guidelines to follow for the next ten years.

"We still have a lot of work to do before the end of the season but globally participation in terms of spectators and media coverage is very satisfactory."