These have been hot days for Michelin. Immediately after the Qatar Grand Prix, Jorge Martin had fiery words against the sole tire supplier, believing that it was a faulty rear tire that relegated him to tenth place after dominating Saturday’s Sprint. A result that has reduced his chances of becoming MotoGP world champion, given that his gap to Pecco Bagnaia has thus risen to 21 points of the 37 that will be up for grabs this weekend.
For its part, the French company took note of the statements of the Prima Pramac Racing rider, who was probably also driven by the adrenaline of the moment in the heat of the moment, effectively indicating her as the arbiter of the world championship dispute. To speak, however, you waited until you had concluded at least the first part of your investigation and today in Valencia the person in charge Piero Taramasso met with the media to explain that an initial check ruled out a manufacturing defect.
“Everyone saw the statements that Martin made after the Qatar race, which were rather harsh against Michelin, even if we understand his position, because he is fighting for the World Championship and was in a moment of great adrenaline. We take always take this type of situation very seriously. First of all, we checked all the manufacturing processes of the tire in France and whether all the parameters were correct when we made it. The answer is that everything was correct, so there had not been a manufacturing defect on the Martin tire,” Taramasso said.
“The second step was to analyze the data collected on the track, which were provided to us by Pramac and Ducati. There were really a lot of them, so in three days we didn’t have the opportunity to analyze them in depth. In any case, we did some our best and last night we shared the first results with Pramac and Ducati. The common conclusion is that Jorge’s performance in Qatar was not in line with what we would have expected. In the first 6-7 laps the performance was “was, then there was a bigger drop than the others. It’s also true that his tire was particularly worn, but he was behind and was pushing to try to catch up. In fact his pressure values were also high, both both the front and the rear”, he added.
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Jorge Martin, Pramac Racing
However, there was something strange and therefore in Clermont-Ferrand they have no intention of stopping here and want to deepen their analysis, to arrive at more certain answers, which leave no more doubts. However, it will still take a long time before we reach a scenario of this type.
“At the moment we don’t have a clear answer, because there are various hypotheses. But we will have the opportunity to carry out other analyzes and we will let you and the teams know if we discover anything more. We will physically cut the tire and check that internally everything is ok, but it will take about a month, a month and a half to get answers. We will also check the tire data from Bagnaia from Sprint (he also complained on Saturday) and we will also work on the hard compound that we brought to Qatar, because it is a rubber which has a very narrow window of use. Therefore, based on how it is exploited, it can have a good or less good performance.”
One of the striking aspects of Martin’s race in Lusail was the start, because the Spanish rider’s Ducati skidded in a clear and rather anomalous way. When Taramasso was asked if this could have been one of the factors that affected the performance of Martin’s tyre, he replied: “Honestly, we have not done a check on the start data, but what we have seen is that the reconnaissance had gone well, because the tire had the right pressure and temperature values. We don’t have the launch control data or anything like that, so we limited ourselves to analyzing the data of the individual laps. Certainly, however, when you don’t start well and you have to push to recover, this can change the strategy of the race.”
Among the aspects that must be taken into consideration are the very particular conditions encountered in Qatar, which certainly made the work more complicated for everyone, from the teams to the drivers. And even in this case the Michelin manager did not hide the fact that there are still some gray areas which need to continue to be investigated.
“The conditions certainly didn’t help, because there was new asphalt and a lot of sand on the track. We had already seen that Formula 1 had had a lot of problems when it raced in Lusail a few weeks earlier. We knew that the conditions would be complicated and this is why we had brought this particularly resistant compound. From the measurements we did as soon as we arrived in Qatar it seemed that the asphalt had little grip, but in reality the bikes found a lot of it and the race was very fast. For example , both in the Sprint and in the long race, many drivers complained about spinning, but it wasn’t visible in the data. So there are still a lot of gray areas to clarify and that’s why we need more time to analyze things more in depth “.
Finally, he was asked if it could have been something related to storage on the circuit, given that it was a non-European race, and Taramasso explained the process that the tires follow from when they are produced to when they are delivered to the teams .
“Storage is a very important part, we need to control the temperature and humidity of where the tires are left. The machines with which we make the tires are automatic, but then we have very meticulous quality controls: the MotoGP tires are checked one at a time. Even when we transport them they are always at a controlled temperature, always at 20 degrees. This is important to maintain the chemical properties. The same applies when they arrive on the circuit. If it concerns non-European races, we have containers in which it is possible to verify these parameters”, he concluded.
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Michelin
#MotoGP #Michelin #rules #manufacturing #defects #Martins #tyre