MotoGP | Taramasso: “The Mugello race was 25″ faster than 2023!”

With the bombshells of Jorge Martin’s move to Aprilia and Marc Marquez’s move to the official Ducati team starting from 2025, in recent days there has been talk almost exclusively about the MotoGP rider market and what happened on the track at Mugello has passed almost in the background. However, given that, thanks to the moving of the Kazakhstan GP to September, the engines will be off for three weeks, it is time to take a step back to the weekend of the Italian GP, ​​dominated by Pecco Bagnaia with a one-two, because on the ups and downs in Tuscany we witnessed some astonishing performances that went even beyond predictions. This was also confirmed to us by the head of Michelin, Piero Taramasso.

“It was a good weekend. It didn’t rain, even though it was in the weather forecast. The track conditions were quite good. In terms of tyres, the medium on the front was the choice of all the riders, both in the Sprint and in the long race. Maybe it could have been an option to try the hard one because, even if it worked in terms of grip, the medium was put a bit under stress by the soft rear which was pushing it, generating some understeer could have given something more on the right shoulder, but seeing as it wasn’t tested by anyone on both Friday and Saturday, logic dictated not using it on Sunday either,” Taramasso told Motorsport.com.

“As regards the rear, the difference between the soft and the medium was not huge. We saw that on Sunday Vinales, who was the only one to have chosen the medium, did a good race and was happy, because he believes that he could have done better than that with the soft, even if it was used by everyone else,” he added.

Were you surprised that almost everyone did the long race with the soft tire on the rear?
“It didn’t surprise me, but I thought I would see more drivers with the medium. Last year there were eight drivers who had already used the soft and after the Sprint we saw that the drop in performance was reduced and that in terms of wear could have been within it with the distance of the GP. What amazed me was seeing the pace they maintained until the end: Bastianini did 1’46″3 and 1’46″2 the last two laps to say that the tires were still very competitive and for us it’s good news, because consistent performance is the objective we set ourselves with the 2024 compounds.”

I’ll let you tell me something that is quite impressive about Sunday’s race…
“The Mugello race lasted 25 seconds less than in 2023 and this means more than a second per lap of difference in terms of pace. It’s really a lot, but clearly it doesn’t just depend on the tyres, because the bikes have been evolved and the drivers also have to attack to stay in front this year, even if all these factors are added, 25 seconds are still a lot, both that of the best pole with Martin and that of the fastest lap in the race this is interesting especially if you consider that this year we have reduced the range compared to previous seasons: in 2019 we had 59 different specifications for the whole championship, while this year there are 30 in total, 10 front and 20 rear”.

Mugello is a track that has many long corners and many riders have talked about the understeer generated by the extragrip of the new rear compounds, which ends up pushing on the front wheel, as you had already underlined. Is the new construction that you should introduce in 2025 also designed to overcome this?
“Actually, no. The fact that the rear pushes more tends to change the balance of the bike, but I think it’s up to the teams to find a solution in terms of settings. The new construction was designed to offer more braking support when enters the corner. The profile is different in order to have a larger contact surface and the carcass to offer a better feeling to the rider. Furthermore, the tire will be lighter than the current one, but it will not help eliminate understeer, that will be the case something that the teams will have to do in terms of balance.”

Among other things, this construction was supposed to be tested by the starting drivers in the official tests on Monday, but the rain ruined the plans…
“I would have hoped to try it, because 2025 is approaching and for now we have very little evidence. Now we will have to postpone everything to the Misano test, but it will probably be late, because it is already quite late in the season”.

MotoE also took to the track at Mugello. What balance can you draw from a tire point of view?
“It went well, both the front and rear tires performed well. In Barcelona we had suffered a little with the front, but that is a really demanding circuit, and in Italy it went decidedly better, so the riders were happy During Race 2, which was actually the first race after the interruption of Race 1 due to Tulovic’s accident, everyone had new tyres, so good grip was seen and the result was achieved. track record. In the recovery of Race 1, however, they all had to start with the same tires they had before the red flag, which had two laps, but this did not prevent us from further lowering the record. Unfortunately, not being able to foresee this situation, we had new tires for only about fifteen riders, so to put them all back in the same condition it was decided to have them start again with the ones they started the race with, but it wasn’t a problem and the times confirm it.”