JPSLotus

Michelin makes unsafe tires IMO. I've been saying it since 2016 that their tires are safety hazards and utter shit.

They vary far too much from race to race, and while they may be setting lap records, they are hardly what I would call consistent and reliable.

Jumkie

They're reliably manipulated.

If you live in a glass house don't throw rocks.

povol

Michelin can control the championship from getting out of hand by doing just that, bringing strange allocations that favor some and not others. Since the rule was passed that hey must use the same construction for every race that they start testing with, this is their new manipulation. Marc should have been smart when he realized things were strange and settled for the 20-16 points.

JPSLotus

I agree. Had he settled for the points like he was doing so well last year, he would have increased his overall points lead further. Now while he still has a good points lead, it's not as good as it could have been had he just played it safe. We'll see what happens at Barcelona and if he has the pace or not. If he doesn't hopefully he just collects the points and lets things be as they are.

Jumkie

The fallout from Argentina was a highly motivated Marquez hell bent on snuffing the championship. "Boring" races followed. Bad for business if your business is keeping 90% of viewers tuned in to see VR. Things have to be done in short order to slow down Marquez and prop up VR. Rather conveniently, VR's performance was boosted at Mugello with a "strange" allocation of front tires; the more things "change" the more they remain the same.

If you live in a glass house don't throw rocks.

Jakrap

The boring racing can be made interesting by a small tire change. Did that happen in Mugello?

Little Walter

Do you recall how much (if at all) MM tested in practice using the hard compounds he used when he fell? I got the impression that the announcers were shocked when he said at the last second he would use them. I didn't see every practice session.

p4p1

IIRC he only tested the hard rear in warm up but was quite fast. He tested both the hard and medium tyres in practise and proffered the medium but the medium wasn't going to last race distance so he had to run the hard which he(and everyone else) didn't like.

Keshav

Yeah, it struck me as a spur-of-the-moment gamble rather than anything he'd really thought out.

Jumkie

Considering the crowd cheered when Marc crashed seems to indicate it was a 'positive' change.

If you live in a glass house don't throw rocks.