MotoGP | Taramasso: “Aragon tough: no data on a new aggressive asphalt”

After closing the demanding weekend at the Red Bull Ring with a beautiful double win by Pecco Bagnaia and encouraging results, Michelin is preparing to face another complicated event from the point of view of tires. After a year of absence, MotoGP returns to Motorland Aragon and compared to 2022, it finds a completely new asphalt. A nice unknown on a circuit that already presents some rather challenging characteristics, as the head of the French company, Piero Taramasso, explained to us.

“It will be a difficult weekend because there is a new asphalt. We didn’t race in Aragon last year, so the only data we have is from 2022, when there was still the old surface. We haven’t had the chance to test, so we will bring an extra specification for the rear: we will have a soft, a medium and a hard. I think the last two will definitely work, while with the soft there will be a lot of work to do to manage the temperature and the wear, because we know that new asphalts usually tend to be quite aggressive. To validate it in the event of a Sprint or a race, we will have to do a lot of laps and analyse it well, because it could be a bit of a risky choice,” Taramasso told Motorsport.com.

Will you bring an extra solution for the front too?
“No, we confirmed the soft, medium and hard because we believe that these solutions are well-targeted in terms of rigidity and that it was not necessary to bring an even harder compound, which probably no one would have used. We decided to offer everyone two more units of the medium solution, which is a bit of a reference tyre for all the riders, the one that works well everywhere. Instead of having 5 available as in the standard allocation, in this case they will have 7. In this way, the riders should be able to manage the weekend well even if the asphalt were to present high levels of wear. But it was also decided to widen the allocation, so over the course of the weekend they will be able to use 11 front tyres and 13 rear tyres, one more than usual in both cases”.

What are the pitfalls you fear the most?
“Aragon is already a complicated circuit in itself, because it is left-handed. In addition, there are corners like the last two, 16 and 17, which are very fast and generate a lot of load on the tyre. Then turn 2 is always delicate, which is the first right after two long straights. To all this we must add that 35-36 degrees are expected in terms of air temperature, which means that the track will easily reach 50 and even more. Some riders also did some training with road bikes and commercial tyres. We have seen photos of both Michelin tyres and those of other brands and you can see that the circuit is aggressive. You could see graining and wear on the right side, but also blisters on the left. And the commercial tyres are quite stiff, so it will be a weekend in which it will be essential to study the data well and find good settings for the bikes to help the tyres.”

In light of all these pitfalls, do you fear that managing the pressures for the teams could be complicated? Also because here, in fact, there hasn’t been a race since the rule of minimum values ​​to be respected was introduced…
“If you can work well on Friday and Saturday, with stable conditions, I think you will have enough data to find the right bases. It is more complicated when you find mixed conditions or temperature changes, but if everything goes smoothly on Friday with 45 minutes of shift in the morning and an hour in the afternoon you can get good data.”

Taking a step back to the Austrian Grand Prix, what conclusions can you draw?
“It’s important to remember that the Red Bull Ring is a very complicated circuit, not only for the tyres, but also for fuel consumption and brakes. For me it’s one of the hardest of the season, together with Phillip Island, Buriram and the Sachsenring. It’s really very demanding on the tyres and considering this, I have to say that we had a good weekend. It was always hot and the track temperature was always above 40 degrees, but we also got close to 50 for the long race. However, the tyres always performed well”.

For the front the choices were quite clear…
“The medium was used both in the Sprint and the long race, because it was the one that offered the best feeling and the best grip. Some also tried to work with the hard, both on Friday and Saturday, and it was almost used in the race too, because it gave much more stability and gave less feeling of locking under braking, which is a sort of locking that occurs when the tyre heats up too much. With that compound, the temperatures were more under control, but the situation was a bit on the limit in the left-hand corners. However, this is due to the layout of the circuit, which only has three corners on that side”.

On Friday we saw several crashes of riders who were using this solution and some people pointed to it as the cause. Was this actually the case?
“Not all, let’s say half. You had to be very careful on the left side in the first laps. But in other cases there were mistakes, or the riders themselves admitted to having gone too aggressively on the kerb. However, it is true that some of those crashes were due to managing the temperature on the left side of the hard tyre. In any case, on the grid of the long race riders like Marini and Bastianini thought until the last second about the possibility of using this solution. It probably would have worked better in the race, because with a full tank they would have put more stress on the front tyre, and in the race you never do cooling laps, so you can maintain the temperature. Furthermore, in this case, staying in the slipstream of other bikes could have also been a help. So it might not have been a risky choice, but given that the medium behaved well, there was no need for that. In any case, we have collected important data, which will be useful for the next races, because we will take this tyre to other demanding circuits with high temperatures. For example, it will also be in Aragon”.

What can you tell us about the rear tires?
“Both solutions worked well. The soft was useful for time attacks, qualifying and the Sprint, where it performed well, even though a third of the grid decided to go with the medium on Saturday. In the long race everyone switched to the medium, which was consistent, with a very high pace considering the rather high temperatures. Not a single drop was felt and once again all the track records were broken. In qualifying, Martin and Bagnaia did spectacular times, because they even managed to get under 1’28”. So in the end we can say that it was a really good weekend”.