MotoGP | Drivers frustrated by the few ideal tires for Sepang

Testing is very limited in current MotoGP. Apart from pre-season tests and some scheduled after race weekends, European brands on the grid can only test with their test drivers at three pre-approved circuits.

Yamaha and Honda have more freedom thanks to the new concession system, being able to ride at all the circuits on the calendar and with their usual riders, but some limits remain.

The concessions also limit the number of tires available for testing during the year. Ducati has 170, while the Japanese brands have 260, which also limits the ride, as several riders said during the Sepang tests.

On the first day in Malaysia, Pecco Bagnaia saw a large part of his day compromised due to a fall in the morning. “The tires I was on got cold and when I warmed them up they didn't work as I expected,” complained the Italian, interviewed by the official MotoGP website.

For his part, Brad Binder felt that the number of tires he had available for the week was too restrictive. “You can only do 24 laps with the tyres, and when they go bad after 15 laps you lose time in the last ten. We have two sets of tires that work (the softer ones, more suitable for Sepang, ed.), so it's difficult” , explained the KTM rider.

“Last year we started with the mediums and we used the softs in both races. With the softs you get maybe 15 good laps, but then the degradation is enormous. On Tuesday I found it frustrating, we didn't do any more testing, We haven't done much lapping anymore, we're so limited with the tires that we've been sitting in the garage waiting.”

Alex Rins also felt limited in his riding due to the limited number of compounds available. Yamaha's new rider had to use tires that were sometimes too worn, making it impossible to change his test program due to the need to conserve tires for the rest of the test.

“In the end we used 26-lap tyres,” said the Spaniard after his first day in Malaysia. “The problem is that, to save one tire for the long run on the last day, and even though we wanted to have three tires for the second day, we had to do a lot of laps with the medium rear and the soft front, which is really bad for these conditions.Therefore there was no time attack.