MotoGP | Taramasso: “Pecco? Strange situation: if a tire doesn’t work, it does from start to finish”

Michelin expected a simple weekend for the second race at Misano. After all, the riders and teams had already competed in the San Marino and Riviera di Rimini Grand Prix, and they had also stopped in Romagna on Monday for an official test day. Therefore, everyone, including the French company, had a lot of data available for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

In general, things went in line with expectations, with performances that led to all the records being lowered again on the track named after Marco Simoncelli. However, Sunday was marred by the difficulties suffered by Pecco Bagnaia, which the Ducati rider blamed on a rear tyre that took almost half the race to start behaving as it should have in normal conditions.

“My state of mind is that I’m pissed off, it’s very easy. Not with Michelin, they can’t do anything about it. I can’t be angry with someone who does something, but doesn’t do it on purpose. But it pisses me off: you get pole, you win the Sprint and in the race you improve your start, being first on the first lap, and seeing yourself pass, with the others losing almost three and a half seconds because you can’t push, is something that really pisses me off”, the Ducati rider said on the spur of the moment.

Then on what his difficulties were, he added: “I have never felt a situation similar to this in history, although I must say that last year, when I went down at the second corner in Barcelona, ​​I had the same feeling in the warm-up lap. Even today, in fact, it happened to me at the last corner, where I risked falling practically without giving gas. The feeling was not the best, the difference is that in Barcelona there is no grip and here the feeling is excellent. The tyre only took 15 laps to work”.

We therefore asked the manager of the Bibendum company, Piero Taramasso, to give us some initial indications on what could have happened to the reigning world champion, even if according to him at the moment it is still difficult to be able to give an explanation.

“Pecco was in front for the first four laps, then he had a drop that we can’t explain: for four or five laps he lost three tenths. We need to understand where this thing comes from, whether it’s something related to the track, the bike or the tyres. But starting from the 12th lap his pace returned very fast and on the 16th he did the fastest lap in 1’30″8, just eight tenths from the pole and the track record. He was coming up strong and it seemed like he could catch Bastianini and Martin, then he fell. We are analyzing the thing, but for the moment we only have his comments and the lap times. When Ducati also gives us the data, we will try to understand together what caused that drop. It will take time, but we would like to understand what it was due to, because there are always new things to discover,” Taramasso told Motorsport.com.

“The strange thing is that the lap times don’t match Pecco’s comments. He says that the tyre didn’t work straight away and only did so from lap 12 onwards. In reality, the times of the first 4 laps were good, so it’s after that that we need to understand where the drop comes from. Only with the data will you be able to understand, but it’s not the behaviour of a tyre that doesn’t work, because that one does it from start to finish and you can see it from the times, which can be 7-8 tenths slower. It wasn’t even the behaviour of a tyre that has temperature problems, even if it happened with some this weekend, especially with the medium rears on the left side. In some cases it took 6-7 laps, but then it got up to temperature and worked well. But even this doesn’t seem like the description we got from Pecco. From these indications it doesn’t seem like a tyre or Warm-Up problem, but I hope we can give everyone an answer soon”, he added.

It is clear that this problem has attracted attention, but Michelin are also keen to underline that for the rest the Emilia Romagna GP weekend has given positive indications.

“The start of the weekend was easier, because the teams had a lot of data and the riders knew the specifications well, because the allocation was the same as the first race in Misano. The weather was also good, because the rain stopped earlier than expected, so the sessions were all in good conditions. The grip wasn’t great, but the track improved over the weekend,” Taramasso explained.

“Since Friday we could see that the times were good and on the front it was confirmed that the best feeling was that offered by the medium tyre, which in the end was the one that all the riders chose for both the Sprint and the long race, because it offered good grip, but also good support and a certain consistency. In certain conditions, it was a bit delicate on the left side and you had to be careful in the first two laps, because the temperature was not too high. A bit like the medium rear, which is a compound made for asphalt temperatures between 35 and 40 degrees, so it takes a few laps to make it work”, he added.

“But this time it worked well, while in the first race at Misano some bikes had suffered more and in fact only nine of them had used it in the race. This weekend instead they understood how to make it work, how to load it more, and in fact everyone chose it except Bezzecchi, who raced with the soft. It is still a tyre that needs to be loaded and at the right pressure to work well, so you must never give up if you want to exploit it to its maximum potential”, he continued.

Even in terms of performance, the responses were very good: “There was also a very fast Sprint, in which everyone used the soft rear and which lasted a good six seconds less than the one two weeks ago. All this over a distance of just 13 laps. The long race was also very fast, 19 seconds faster than the one in 2023 (in the GP of San Marino and the Rimini Riviera there was rain for a few laps which extended the race time, ed.), but the riders imposed a truly infernal pace right from the first laps”, he concluded.