[kropotkin thinks...] - Consistent Tire Performance: Piero Taramasso Explains How Mic

[Ninjette Newsbot]

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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," wrote the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Little minds or no, consistency is the one complaint which many riders still level at Michelin, the official tire supplier of MotoGP. When it comes to grip, feedback, and chatter, complaints are few and far between. But consistency of feel between one tire and another remains a problem, at least in the minds of the riders.

The 2018 season opener at Qatar threw up several more examples of this lack of consistency. Ahead of the weekend, Cal Crutchlow had expressed concerns about the variation between what are supposed to be identical tires. "You can show them the data, and if you have 20% throttle here, and this tire's got this much more spin than the tire that you've got 50% throttle, and that's got less spin. It doesn't work. Apparently, they've come off the same batch."

During the race, both Johann Zarco and Dani Pedrosa believed that a lack of consistency had hampered their performance. Zarco had led for the first 17 laps, before fading with what he believed was a faulty front tire. "I got the best I could, I did what I could do, I did the job, and when I have a technician from Michelin and also on my team saying that something has been wrong, it means that OK, the rider's job is done, then when you are doing this kind of sport, this can happen." The problem, the Tech3 Yamaha rider said, was that the front tire didn't want to turn. "It was sliding. Just sliding. You go into the corner and instead of turning, you go wide. Or if you want to turn you can crash. It was this kind of problem."

Dani Pedrosa had a similar issue, though his problem was with the rear of the bike. The Repsol Honda rider had a very good front tire and a lot of confidence with it, but the rear tire was simply not playing ball. "Unfortunately the rear was spinning a lot," the Spaniard said. "I couldn't really do better, I was losing a lot in corner 3 and the long left going up and some other corners in sector 4, everybody was getting by me, and it was difficult. Lucky that I had the front so I could go hard on the front to keep the pace, but, you know, unfortunately yesterday I had one not so good tire in the qualifying, and one today in the race." It definitely felt like it was the tire, Pedrosa added, and not the change in the track from previous days.