MotoGP | Taramasso: “Aragon troubles? A mix of terrible conditions and little time to work”

Piero Taramasso had anticipated it to us last week: the Motorland Aragon weekend would be one of the most complicated of the season from the point of view of the tyres and it must be said that the Michelin manager had seen it coming because, by his own admission, the one of Marc Marquez’s great return to victory, after a good 1043 days of abstinence, has so far proved to be the most critical ever of the 2024 MotoGP.

Not having had the chance to test before the race weekend, the new asphalt was an unknown for everyone and it wasn’t a nice surprise. The grip level was already really low in itself and to this was added the rain that fell both on Friday night and Saturday night, which further dirtied the surface, bringing sand onto the track. This created very critical conditions, also giving rise to complaints, such as the veiled one from Pecco Bagnaia on the front tyre at his disposal in the Sprint, which he finished in ninth place. But between graining on the front and blisters on the rear, it wasn’t an easy weekend for anyone, as Taramasso himself explained to us.

“It was a really tough weekend, the toughest of the season. We expected to arrive there and find a new asphalt with a lot of grip, stable weather and high temperatures, given that it was late August-early September. Instead we arrived and found ourselves dealing with an asphalt that had zero grip and mixed weather conditions, with storms that also brought a lot of sand onto the track. All of this made things much more difficult from the first day, because FP1 was basically useless: the track was so dirty that the data we collected was practically useless,” Taramasso told Motorsport.com.

“The only good session was on Friday afternoon, because the track had started to clean up a bit and we immediately realised that the soft rear was quite at the limit in terms of temperature. We knew it was an aggressive choice and we had already warned the teams. Since we had brought three specifications for the rear, since the asphalt was new, we risked this solution, knowing that in any case there was the medium, which was the ‘right’ one, and then the hard, which was the back-up in case of excessive temperatures or wear. So we concentrated on monitoring the temperatures and the spinning level of the tyres. And in the end it was quite clear that he could do the Sprint, but not the long race: for 10-11 laps it could be enough, but as the distance increased the blister would have become too important”, he added.

Paradoxically, in the Sprint the problem became the front tyre…
“In the Sprint everyone went with the medium in front and the soft behind. The surprise was that in the end the rear didn’t suffer more than it should have, but the front did a lot. All the riders suffered a lot of graining, both left and right, after just two or three laps. This happened because the soft rear tyre was pushing a lot on the front, so the bikes were really unbalanced. Furthermore, the track was dirty, due to the presence of sand brought by the rain, and a situation similar to that of Qatar was created. But perhaps on Saturday the conditions were even worse than those of Qatar. And there were some who had a lot of difficulty, like Bagnaia for example”.

Even without saying it directly, Pecco implied that there was something wrong with his tire: did you do any checks?
“Of course, and his tyre was like the others, with graining on both the right and left side. All the riders told us that the front was at the limit. Pecco’s strong point is precisely that, because he has a lot of feeling under braking and can enter corners hard, so with this graining he probably suffered a bit more than the others. This was our analysis and also that of Ducati, because we exchanged the data and observed them really well. However, it is clear that at this point the situation was not the most serene for everyone. After the Sprint, therefore, we communicated to the teams that they could not use the soft rear for the long race and that they would have to go on the medium, because we were convinced that this would also help the front, generating less thrust from the rear”.

And did this measure yield the desired results?
“On Sunday, everyone ran on a pair of medium tyres and in the end it was a good choice. Overall, it went better than the Sprint, although there were some riders who had difficulty getting the rear tyre up to temperature, so they performed less. For example, Vinales and Quartararo suffered from this situation. Those in front, on the other hand, didn’t suffer too much and their performance was quite good.”

In Sunday’s race we also saw again some penalties related to tyre pressures for Di Giannantonio, Miller and Raul Fernandez…
“For all three riders it was a penalty related to the front tyre and for a matter of one or two laps. It was more than anything bad luck and I think the key to these penalties, but more generally to this graining on the front and the difficulties experienced this weekend comes from the fact that in FP1 we couldn’t work properly due to the track conditions, because it was too dirty, so the pace was too slow. Even on Saturday morning we couldn’t work properly on the bikes, because it had rained all night, so the settings of the bikes were still a bit approximate. The only data of some value were those from Friday afternoon and, if you like, those from the Sprint. The keys to the problems were the terrible conditions and the little time to work on the bikes.”