"I don’t think it’s safer" - Bagnaia concerned by tyre pressure punishments
From Silverstone, post-race time penalties will be given to any riders that fail to reach the minimum tyre pressures specified by Michelin for at least half of a race distance in a grand prix and 30% of a sprint. A warning will be given for the first infringement.
The new real-time monitoring system has been introduced to prevent the risk of tyre failures due to sustained running below the specified minimum pressure.
“Our tyre is designed to work at the minimum pressure given [1.88 bar front, 1.7 bar rear]. You cannot go lower because the risk is that you break the construction, the carcass,” Michelin MotoGP boss Piero Taramasso previously explained to Crash.net.
“If [the tyre] deflects or moves too much the risk is that you break the tyre. So it's not the heat, it's a mechanical failure. So you have to respect this minimum pressure.”
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But riders such as Bagnaia remain concerned that being forced to run a higher starting pressure (to avoid the risk of a penalty) means it’ll be easier to have an accident if temperature/pressure then rises while following another bike.
“The tyre pressure will be a big change,” Bagnaia, who currently holds a 35-point title lead, said on Thursday. “If you’re over the [upper-pressure range] it’s easy to crash. If you don’t want to crash, you have to go slow. And if you are below [the minimum], you are penalised [now].
“It is difficult… It’s something you can’t control from the box, only from the bike. If you are leading, then your pressure is low [in fresh air]. If you are behind [another rider], your pressure is high and it’s impossible to overtake.
“Above 2.0 [bar] it starts to become difficult to stop the bike, to close the lines. If you want to go fast you have to risk, and you crash, or you go slow. If you are slow, like my race in Jerez, I let two laps go to let the pressure go down.
Michelin's Piero Taramasso: "The target value for the front tyre, set at 1.88 bar, and the rear tyre, at 1.68 bar, must be respected for 30% of the time of the Sprint Race, and 50% of the Grand Prix. These values may vary slightly upwards or downwards depending on the circuit."
— Peter McLaren (@McLarenMotoGP) August 3, 2023
“It won’t be easy. In the Safety Commission, we spoke about our point of view but the decision was to stick with this rule.
“It’s something for safety [but] I don’t think it’s safer because we’ve never had problems with [low] tyre pressure. For the rear, yes, but the front tyre? 1.9 is the best pressure possible - lower, the bike moves, higher, the bike moves.
“So, for me, it’s not safer. But they have decided... We have to understand our riding style when the tyre pressure starts to grow.”
Pramac Ducati's Jorge Martin, currently Bagnaia's nearest title rival, said: "The [tyre pressure] window is not so big, so it is risky."
"It is difficult to control [the pressure]. Going high with pressure is dangerous," said VR46's Marco Bezzecchi, third in the standings.
Peter has been in the paddock for 20 years and has seen Valentino Rossi come and go. He is at the forefront of the Suzuki exit story and Marc Marquez’s injury issues.
