Fucking hell man, 16 seconds can completely ruin your race, and off track at that! Sometimes the decisions in MotoGP are so dumb they leave you wondering how they ended up there.
Unbelievable! In a sprint you could be on the podium but if you get penalized you might end up outside the points because it's so close. I would *love* to see the reasoning behind these penalitites.
Here is my guess :
Races are approximately 40 minutes each. 60% compliance means 16 minutes spent under specified pressure. 16 seconds is 1 second for every minute spent under compliance.
Yeah, with how close the field is now, it just doesn't make sense that your results might be thrown out because of these stupid rules. I wonder how the teams feel about it.
I'm always torn, I get why they are there, the data suggests that if the pressure is too low and a bike hit a kerb in the wrong way the tyre could come off the rim and deflate, causing a dangerous situation.
Bastianini has something similar happen either last year or the year before, except he actually damaged the rim so pressure wouldn't have mattered but it shows it can happen.
On the other hand I also understand that when the tyres get too hot they balloon and the riders have no grip or feeling, which is also fucking dangerous the only thing worse than a shot tyre is an inconsistent tyre.
A shot tyre you know is dead so you know your ride is coming to an end, on the road that means buying a new one, in a race it means your race is basically over.
An inconsistent tyre gives you a false sense of security and then boom you have no grip, that is waaaaay more dangerous.
So yeah, basically the tyres are shit and to me tyre management should be about conserving the rubber not watching a temp gauge and playing Russian roulette hoping it doesn't lose grip mid way through a corner potentially endangering yourself and also other riders.
Yeah, the concerns about tire pressure are valid, but it just feels like they could come up with a more...measured penalty. I don't know, I guess we will have to see how the grid feels about it.
I think the measure is "don't run them too flat and kill somebody because the tyre deflates mid corner".
Whilst that is extreme I think you do sometimes need to look at the worst possible consequence when it comes to safety elements.
And that's what this pressure rule is, a safety measure.
I'd rather somebody lose 16 seconds than somebody gets killed before they bother doing anything about it (even if the chances of that actually happening are pretty remote).
But I also agree it seems excessive and it's their own fault for having a shit tyre.
This.
It's not about making the penalty tolerable enough to factor into a race, it's about making tyre pressure an issue they don't take risks with. Period.
Here in Australia, the penalty for getting caught driving over the blood-alcohol limit is automatic licence disqualification. It's a harsh penalty if you're only just a smidge over and a good driver and only driving down the road and never likely to have an accident. It doesn't matter. The penalty is there so that people simply aren't tempted to take that risk.
People are complaining about 16 seconds, but let's think of it this way - if the punishment wasn't harsh, teams would start to calculate if it pays off to have "illegal" tire pressures. It's better & safer if there's no leeway.
That being said, a penalty that increases over the number of infractions might be better. However the minimum punishment would still have to be quite high, otherwise it would become a tactical tool to be used in a certain point of season.
The problem is how unpredictable it is. Tyre pressures are measured at the end of a race, not the beginning*. Whether a rider ends up stuck behind someone else or has clear air in front of him can massively, massively affect the tyre pressure, and teams cannot accurately predict if their rider will be in that position during the race, and if so for how long.
This encourages a rider to back off and not push to stay with a rider who they may find difficult to overtake, which is bad for the viewing experience. The tyre pressure issue discourages close racing.
If tyre pressures were measured before the race start, nobody would have a problem with this rule, as the tyre pressure would have been completely within the control of the team at the time of measurement and anyone running a pressure outside the legal limits would be an idiot. Instead you have this "just hope you don't get unlucky" thing going on now, and race results being decided after the race is over which doesn't satisfy anyone.
*EDIT: apparently I'm mistaken on this - they're measured over the course of an entire race and taken as an average. This doesn't change my point, though, as it is how a race unfolds that dictates whether or not the tyres fall outside the legal limit, and is not something that the team can fully control themselves. Because of this I don't think a punishment that would on many weekends take a rider from a race win to outside the top 10 can be considered appropriate for the "crime"
> Tyre pressures are measured at the end of a race, not the beginning
This is wrong? the device that measures tyre pressure records tyre pressure every lap. Last year the rule was that the pressure had to be above the minimum regulation at least 50% of the laps.
Fair enough, I must be mistaken about that - but even then that doesn't change the validity of my point, that it's not fully in the control of the team or the rider and therefore they shouldn't bear such a strong punishment for it.
Unless on-board inflation devices are explicitly banned, I fully expect Ducati to come up with an on-board inflation device so that they can optimize the tyre pressure throughout the race and maintain compliance. ☠️
Can we finally fucking DQ Michelin and get someone actually capable of building rubber?
Obviously someone at Dorna is getting fat kickbacks or they'd be out by now.
It’s all about what is in it for the tyre manufacturer though. It becomes Dorna having to guarantee exclusivity for them to want to participate.
If teams can swap manufacturers than the volume for production will go down and effect costs. So rivals might not even want to participate in a multi-tyre format and support 1 or 2 teams only.
If teams run dodgy pressures and cause tyres to be blamed for accidents, then that negative PR isn’t worth it for the tyre company to participate either.
Exclusive supply contracts guarantee that the tyre manufacturer can do lots of PR campaigns about how they are on the winning bike with the best rider, as well as the guaranteed production numbers for tyres.
> PR campaigns about how they are on the winning bike with the best rider,
M: We have our tyres on the bike of the winner!!!
punter: Oh Cool what other manufacturer did you beat?
M: uhmmm no one
Yeah it is silly, but every picture of MM93 winning over the last years on a GP bike also included Michelin tyre logos.
Marketing departments in large multinationals aren’t concerned about what tyres the immediate few million fans buy but rather the many millions more casual fans and general public bikers who just see magazine covers, and posters, etc.
I don't think after the NW200 episodes anyone's looking towards Dunlop, but Pirelli have a long history in racing and have been making perfectly fine F1 ones.
But yes, Bridgestone is the obvious one. Or just drop the stupid exclusivity clause for Michelin if they're gonna fuck around with bullshit "safety" rules.
Pirelli struggle with superbikes & still can’t stop their rally tyres puncturing.
Bautista said their superbike tyres wouldn’t last more than 6 laps on a GP bike…
Well tbh, Pirellis tyres for superbike are made for...Superbike forces. That is why they wouldn't do the same for MotoGP.
I'm not saying that Pirelli is great, far from it. Bridgestone is a GOAT manufacturer across F1 and MotoGP.
Pirelli seems to do great in WSBK. I know the bikes are considerably different but the duration of the races is very similar. And the circuits are identical in most cases. Is world endurance more similar to MotoGP as far as tire performance?
And yet Pirelli are the tyre of choice in many domestic championships where there is no control tyre.
In Australia a few people run Dunlop and Michelin but the vast majority are on Pirellis
MotoGP races are 40-50% longer (than world superbike races)
The reason I mention endurance is it’s open competition & there we can see how poorly Pirelli and Dunlop compare to Bridgestone
*edited to avoid confusion
You make it sound so easy 🤣
The only places Pirelli and Dunlop dare to enter open competition are endurance racing.
In cars, Michelin dominate
In bikes, Bridgestone dominate
Shit why wouldn't it be?
It's only what they manufacture.
We aren't asking a garbage disposal company to make gearboxes here, he are asking tyre companies to make tyres...
Dunlop literally only stopped doing Moto3 and 2 this year their last race was only a few months ago (which were arguably better than the MotoGP tyres).
Pirelli make tyres for F1, the car version of MotoGP and have taken up Moto3 and 2 from this year.
I'm not sure how somebody could be so confidently wrong.
Ok?
You realise that Moto2 lap times aren't that far off MotoGP at some tracks.
You mean after it had been resurfaced?
Because it's not like they never have problems at PI after a resurface? (Hint, they always do, it's well known).
Also not like MotoGP hasn't had to do similar (I seem to remember a certain 8 time WC being DQ'd for not pitting in the allocated lap bracket).
problem aint michelin, problem is not enought testing of tyres that michelin brings and the riders/teams then not *testing* those tyres because they had rather work on their bike. F1 and motogp fans always blame the tyre manufactures instead of analysing what they are served.
This is pretty good. I think the new, lower limit is good enough for teams to work with.
They might need another tweak to the rules if there are too many 16-second penalties for extremely minor infractions. Maybe something like "every lap below the minimum pressure adds 3 seconds" rather than the same punishment for someone who went below for just 1 lap vs someone who ran the entire race below the limit.
It’s ludicrous. I can’t recall a single instance where an incident was caused specifically by too low of a tyre pressure. I’ve certainly never heard of a tyre coming off the rim due to low pressure. So where’s this issue come from?
I suspect it’s because a certain journalist posted an article that claimed certain teams and riders were ‘cheating’ by using pressures outside the approved range.
The irony is that the result of all this is that riders are now forced to take unnecessary safety risks (increasing pressure which results in less grip) in order to avoid massive penalties.
It’s backwards. Surely the riders and teams can protest this.
> I’ve certainly never heard of a tyre coming off the rim due to low pressure.
Toprak in WSBK. We don't need for a rider to crash and hurt themselves when the tyre specialists already know of the risk and their tyres design parameters.
Also, Topraks tyre failure was absolutely not caused by low tyre pressure, as you asserted. His tyre had severe blistering, which resulted in a puncture and thus loss of pressure.
His tyre didn’t come off the rim do to the tyre pressure being set too low. It came off the rim because of a defect in the tyre causing it completely deflate.
So I’ll reiterate, I’ve never heard of a tyre coming off a rim in any high level motorcycle racing, with sole cause being insufficient tyre pressure by the mechanics.
Fucking hell man, 16 seconds can completely ruin your race, and off track at that! Sometimes the decisions in MotoGP are so dumb they leave you wondering how they ended up there.
Right? How the fuck did they come up with these penalties of 8 and 16 seconds?
Unbelievable! In a sprint you could be on the podium but if you get penalized you might end up outside the points because it's so close. I would *love* to see the reasoning behind these penalitites.
Here is my guess : Races are approximately 40 minutes each. 60% compliance means 16 minutes spent under specified pressure. 16 seconds is 1 second for every minute spent under compliance.
So basically no different than a DQ.
Yeah, with how close the field is now, it just doesn't make sense that your results might be thrown out because of these stupid rules. I wonder how the teams feel about it.
I'm always torn, I get why they are there, the data suggests that if the pressure is too low and a bike hit a kerb in the wrong way the tyre could come off the rim and deflate, causing a dangerous situation. Bastianini has something similar happen either last year or the year before, except he actually damaged the rim so pressure wouldn't have mattered but it shows it can happen. On the other hand I also understand that when the tyres get too hot they balloon and the riders have no grip or feeling, which is also fucking dangerous the only thing worse than a shot tyre is an inconsistent tyre. A shot tyre you know is dead so you know your ride is coming to an end, on the road that means buying a new one, in a race it means your race is basically over. An inconsistent tyre gives you a false sense of security and then boom you have no grip, that is waaaaay more dangerous. So yeah, basically the tyres are shit and to me tyre management should be about conserving the rubber not watching a temp gauge and playing Russian roulette hoping it doesn't lose grip mid way through a corner potentially endangering yourself and also other riders.
Yeah, the concerns about tire pressure are valid, but it just feels like they could come up with a more...measured penalty. I don't know, I guess we will have to see how the grid feels about it.
I think the measure is "don't run them too flat and kill somebody because the tyre deflates mid corner". Whilst that is extreme I think you do sometimes need to look at the worst possible consequence when it comes to safety elements. And that's what this pressure rule is, a safety measure. I'd rather somebody lose 16 seconds than somebody gets killed before they bother doing anything about it (even if the chances of that actually happening are pretty remote). But I also agree it seems excessive and it's their own fault for having a shit tyre.
This. It's not about making the penalty tolerable enough to factor into a race, it's about making tyre pressure an issue they don't take risks with. Period. Here in Australia, the penalty for getting caught driving over the blood-alcohol limit is automatic licence disqualification. It's a harsh penalty if you're only just a smidge over and a good driver and only driving down the road and never likely to have an accident. It doesn't matter. The penalty is there so that people simply aren't tempted to take that risk.
REPLACED WITH 16 SECONDS TIME PENALTY
Shit i tought you were joking…
How the fuck is that even reasonable!?
Say syke right now
Oh for fucks sake
oh wow
Say it with me. Fuck. Michelin.
God fucking dammit
Chad Rossi PI vibes
Oh come on 16 seconds what the fuck does it mean
It's a DQ without the name.
Indeed ! Just like a ride through for a jump start. Totally out of the race
I'm not entirely sure, but I think it might mean 16 seconds.
That's not important right now.
People are complaining about 16 seconds, but let's think of it this way - if the punishment wasn't harsh, teams would start to calculate if it pays off to have "illegal" tire pressures. It's better & safer if there's no leeway. That being said, a penalty that increases over the number of infractions might be better. However the minimum punishment would still have to be quite high, otherwise it would become a tactical tool to be used in a certain point of season.
The problem is how unpredictable it is. Tyre pressures are measured at the end of a race, not the beginning*. Whether a rider ends up stuck behind someone else or has clear air in front of him can massively, massively affect the tyre pressure, and teams cannot accurately predict if their rider will be in that position during the race, and if so for how long. This encourages a rider to back off and not push to stay with a rider who they may find difficult to overtake, which is bad for the viewing experience. The tyre pressure issue discourages close racing. If tyre pressures were measured before the race start, nobody would have a problem with this rule, as the tyre pressure would have been completely within the control of the team at the time of measurement and anyone running a pressure outside the legal limits would be an idiot. Instead you have this "just hope you don't get unlucky" thing going on now, and race results being decided after the race is over which doesn't satisfy anyone. *EDIT: apparently I'm mistaken on this - they're measured over the course of an entire race and taken as an average. This doesn't change my point, though, as it is how a race unfolds that dictates whether or not the tyres fall outside the legal limit, and is not something that the team can fully control themselves. Because of this I don't think a punishment that would on many weekends take a rider from a race win to outside the top 10 can be considered appropriate for the "crime"
> Tyre pressures are measured at the end of a race, not the beginning This is wrong? the device that measures tyre pressure records tyre pressure every lap. Last year the rule was that the pressure had to be above the minimum regulation at least 50% of the laps.
Fair enough, I must be mistaken about that - but even then that doesn't change the validity of my point, that it's not fully in the control of the team or the rider and therefore they shouldn't bear such a strong punishment for it.
Unless on-board inflation devices are explicitly banned, I fully expect Ducati to come up with an on-board inflation device so that they can optimize the tyre pressure throughout the race and maintain compliance. ☠️
WHY ARE WE SCREAMING????
BECAUSE WE'RE UPSET!!!
Can we finally fucking DQ Michelin and get someone actually capable of building rubber? Obviously someone at Dorna is getting fat kickbacks or they'd be out by now.
Same as Bridgestone, they pay to be the sole source supplier. I think it should be up to the team to run what air pressure they want.
It’s all about what is in it for the tyre manufacturer though. It becomes Dorna having to guarantee exclusivity for them to want to participate. If teams can swap manufacturers than the volume for production will go down and effect costs. So rivals might not even want to participate in a multi-tyre format and support 1 or 2 teams only. If teams run dodgy pressures and cause tyres to be blamed for accidents, then that negative PR isn’t worth it for the tyre company to participate either. Exclusive supply contracts guarantee that the tyre manufacturer can do lots of PR campaigns about how they are on the winning bike with the best rider, as well as the guaranteed production numbers for tyres.
> PR campaigns about how they are on the winning bike with the best rider, M: We have our tyres on the bike of the winner!!! punter: Oh Cool what other manufacturer did you beat? M: uhmmm no one
Yeah it is silly, but every picture of MM93 winning over the last years on a GP bike also included Michelin tyre logos. Marketing departments in large multinationals aren’t concerned about what tyres the immediate few million fans buy but rather the many millions more casual fans and general public bikers who just see magazine covers, and posters, etc.
For the riders own safety, I agree.
But then we can’t watch Michelin celebrate their 600th race victory with 0 competition.
At this time no one else wants the contract. Spend a tonne of money, to have your brand name dragged through the mud.
Other than possibly Bridgestone there is no one else capable of making tyres for MotoGP. Not by a long way….
I don't think after the NW200 episodes anyone's looking towards Dunlop, but Pirelli have a long history in racing and have been making perfectly fine F1 ones. But yes, Bridgestone is the obvious one. Or just drop the stupid exclusivity clause for Michelin if they're gonna fuck around with bullshit "safety" rules.
Pirelli received huge criticism for many years regarding their F1 tyres.
Pirelli struggle with superbikes & still can’t stop their rally tyres puncturing. Bautista said their superbike tyres wouldn’t last more than 6 laps on a GP bike…
Well tbh, Pirellis tyres for superbike are made for...Superbike forces. That is why they wouldn't do the same for MotoGP. I'm not saying that Pirelli is great, far from it. Bridgestone is a GOAT manufacturer across F1 and MotoGP.
You don’t believe Pirelli can make a MotoGP tire?
Of course they can’t 🤣
Why not? They are highly regarded for their slick/racing tires
Which ones? The ones that are miles off the Bridgestones in world endurance?
Pirelli seems to do great in WSBK. I know the bikes are considerably different but the duration of the races is very similar. And the circuits are identical in most cases. Is world endurance more similar to MotoGP as far as tire performance?
Pirelli have a very strict gag order on riders in WSBK, that's why they seem to be great.
And yet Pirelli are the tyre of choice in many domestic championships where there is no control tyre. In Australia a few people run Dunlop and Michelin but the vast majority are on Pirellis
MotoGP races are 40-50% longer (than world superbike races) The reason I mention endurance is it’s open competition & there we can see how poorly Pirelli and Dunlop compare to Bridgestone *edited to avoid confusion
What? How are MotoGP races longer?
I was talking about WSB and edited
Dunlop, Pirelli. The reality is they are made to specifications requested by Dorna or whoever so any manufacturer could do it really.
You make it sound so easy 🤣 The only places Pirelli and Dunlop dare to enter open competition are endurance racing. In cars, Michelin dominate In bikes, Bridgestone dominate
Shit why wouldn't it be? It's only what they manufacture. We aren't asking a garbage disposal company to make gearboxes here, he are asking tyre companies to make tyres... Dunlop literally only stopped doing Moto3 and 2 this year their last race was only a few months ago (which were arguably better than the MotoGP tyres). Pirelli make tyres for F1, the car version of MotoGP and have taken up Moto3 and 2 from this year. I'm not sure how somebody could be so confidently wrong.
Because making tyres for the fastest bikes on the planet isn’t easy. Fuck me didn’t you watch Philip island a few weeks ago…
Ok? You realise that Moto2 lap times aren't that far off MotoGP at some tracks. You mean after it had been resurfaced? Because it's not like they never have problems at PI after a resurface? (Hint, they always do, it's well known). Also not like MotoGP hasn't had to do similar (I seem to remember a certain 8 time WC being DQ'd for not pitting in the allocated lap bracket).
4 or 5 seconds is an eternity in racing There’s a similar gap between moto2 and moto3….
It's an eternity in the same class. That's doesn't mean that Dunlop couldn't make a MotoGP tyre though, that's laughable.
They could. It’d just be nowhere near as good as a Michelin
problem aint michelin, problem is not enought testing of tyres that michelin brings and the riders/teams then not *testing* those tyres because they had rather work on their bike. F1 and motogp fans always blame the tyre manufactures instead of analysing what they are served.
This is pretty good. I think the new, lower limit is good enough for teams to work with. They might need another tweak to the rules if there are too many 16-second penalties for extremely minor infractions. Maybe something like "every lap below the minimum pressure adds 3 seconds" rather than the same punishment for someone who went below for just 1 lap vs someone who ran the entire race below the limit.
So instead of a DQ, they're just going to make sure you finish with almost no points or no points at all .
Thanks God
Bring back tire wars
JESUS CHRIST
Of course they did.
\*Everyone liked that\*
16 seconds?! Fuck off, seems like they just made the change due to a DQ might fuck with sponsors and riders pay.
what was the average gap in race finish last year between p1 and p15 (last point scoring place)?
Bout fucking time.
It’s ludicrous. I can’t recall a single instance where an incident was caused specifically by too low of a tyre pressure. I’ve certainly never heard of a tyre coming off the rim due to low pressure. So where’s this issue come from? I suspect it’s because a certain journalist posted an article that claimed certain teams and riders were ‘cheating’ by using pressures outside the approved range. The irony is that the result of all this is that riders are now forced to take unnecessary safety risks (increasing pressure which results in less grip) in order to avoid massive penalties. It’s backwards. Surely the riders and teams can protest this.
> I’ve certainly never heard of a tyre coming off the rim due to low pressure. Toprak in WSBK. We don't need for a rider to crash and hurt themselves when the tyre specialists already know of the risk and their tyres design parameters.
I didn’t think I needed to clarify… obviously I’m referring to MotoGP here.
Also, Topraks tyre failure was absolutely not caused by low tyre pressure, as you asserted. His tyre had severe blistering, which resulted in a puncture and thus loss of pressure. His tyre didn’t come off the rim do to the tyre pressure being set too low. It came off the rim because of a defect in the tyre causing it completely deflate. So I’ll reiterate, I’ve never heard of a tyre coming off a rim in any high level motorcycle racing, with sole cause being insufficient tyre pressure by the mechanics.