This weekend sees the second race of the MotoGP season, at Jerez. It should have been the third, but the Japanese Grand Prix was postponed by the ash cloud. It’s the first of a frankly astonishing four rounds in Spain. Sounds like we need a map of MotoGP 2010.

Unlike my Google Maps powered map of Formula 1 2010, I thought I’d go a bit abstract. So I’ve overlaid on a map the nationalities of all riders listed for the MotoGP, Moto2 and 125cc races in Qatar, the size of the label proportional to the number of riders of that nationality.

In short: Spain doesn’t fit. With 23 riders, it spills out of Europe, into Africa, and halfway into the Atlantic. Italy, with 16 riders, isn’t much better. It’s as well that not all European countries are represented, because they wouldn’t fit. San Marino is somewhere over Turkey as it is.

No such problem on other continents, and as in Formula 1, there’s no African representation whatsoever. But with 4 riders from the USA, and two races in the country, MotoGP is certainly doing more in that important market than Formula 1.

I hope you like it. It’s colourful if nothing else.

• Map based on ‘World map blank black lines 4500px monochrome.png’ from Wikimedia Commons – Some rights reserved
• Map only licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
• Rider lists lifted from MotoGP website
• Data table:
  

  Abbreviation	Country	Riders
  AUS	Australia	2
  COL	Columbia	1
  CZE	Czech Republic	3
  FIN	Finland	1
  FRA	France	9
  GBR	UK	3
  GER	Germany	5
  HUN	Hungary	1
  ITA	Italy	16
  JPN	Japan	4
  MAL	Malaysia	1
  NED	Netherlands	1
  NOR	Norway	1
  QAT	Qatar	1
  RSM	San Marino	1
  RUS	Russia	1
  SPA	Spain	23
  SWI	Switzerland	3
  THA	Thailand	1
  UKR	Ukraine	1
  USA	USA	4
  VEN	Venezuela	1