The 18-race 2010 series starts in Qatar on Sunday and is largely weighted towards Europe, with four races in Spain and two in Italy. However three of last year's races were held in the Asia-Pacific region and over the three-day race weekend drew crowds of 102,000 (Malaysia), 105,000 (Australia) and 65,000 (Japan).

“It's good but there are other options and we are looking for them,” Ezpeleta said. “There are other countries in Asia where we are discussing and I think the next changes in the calendar will be because we will expand in the Asian region. Of course, these are preliminary discussions and we are not able to say which countries we are discussing with.

“We were in China for four years and there was not any impact. The promoter was just making a race but nothing to impact commercially. The opposite is Malaysia, which is working very well and every year we have more spectators.”

Ezpeleta added that Singapore, 300km away from Malaysia, has showed great interest in hosting a race but that he was keen to spread races around.

Dorna also announced yesterday that it had agreed to renew its deal with Iveco (Industrial Vehicles Corporation) for the company to remain official MotoGP truck and commercial vehicle supplier for a further two years.