I understand and concur with your point in respect of the intended purpose of the soft wet tyre. For want of a better phrase, have you ever prodded one? It’s like plasticine. As Krop’s piece mentions, these are designed ideally for full on torrential conditions, those similar to the start of the Moto 2 race. Referring to my original post #224, the clamour for the soft rear appears to have been precipitated by Iannone, which never bodes well. Who else? – a man renowned for trading durability for opening fast laps as we saw when he attempted to run races using what was essentially a couple of grades away from a qualifying tyre availed to the open class bikes last year. It was a risky strategy, but then no one expected the medium rear and soft front to work for him last week at the Red Bull Ring. Sprint out of the traps, build a lead and switch bikes whilst those on the hard front are teetering around mired in the pack and marooned at the back of the field riding the early laps on marbles. What could possibly go wrong?
Baz’s testing accident at Sepang was a consequence of low pressure, a transgression that RD are particularly vigilant about punishing, which is why Keifer Racing – although Dunlop shod, were justifiably demoted on the grid and not simply because Kent had a performance advantage associated with a lower PSI. Imagine that??!!?
View attachment 12225
How the hell did that get in there?
I digress. Despite Baz’s misfortune, for which the team were fully accountable, Scotty’s delamination at Argentina was deeply concerning and since you are very fond of mentioning Lorenzo’s mental fragility, I can tell you that it seriously spooked Redding. Michelin were negligent and it could have resulted in serious injury if not a loss of life far less the psychological effect on the rider and their confidence. Technical failures will always occur when you are pushing machinery to the limits, but were the Michelin soft wets outside of that envelope of safety and if so, should there be a wider margin beyond optimal parameters?
As you said: ‘It's always going to be a percentage of the tires failing when they're used for the wrong conditions. Every single tire isn't going to fail the exact same way or at the exact same time. Different riding styles will have an affect [sic]on this.’
…and as has already been mentioned, differences in set up will either tend to exacerbate or ameliorate wear. Rider style determines the comfort zone of optimal set up preferences, which impacts upon rider confidence - axiomatic maybe, but is overlooked in so many threads on here. In spite of your point regarding the wrong conditions, I do think that Dovi for one would beg to differ and agree with the contention that the lack of consistency is a matter of grave concern. You made the point that Dovi is a hard braker I agree – a particular strength in the 125 and 250 class - but so is Iannone and remember, Dovi runs a significantly longer bike than the other Andrea. Dovi’s tyre failed without warning, prematurely and almost catastrophically which in those conditions, shouldn't have happened. Given the abundance of surface water at that early stage in the race to cool the tyres, that is entirely a quality control issue and in no way was the rider culpable in my opinion. If Michelin as you say gave their assent for the tyre to be used in anticipation of a white flag, irrespective of the rapidly drying track and aside from the fact that the tyres are best deployed in teeming rain, it was after all a wet race and the duration of Dovi’s should have been well within tolerances of the product. As Lorenzo opined, you expect degradation on a drying track and side wear but when pieces go out of the tyre this shouldn’t happen. Meanwhile, Iannone’s dogged determination/stupidity reminded me of Hunt on the rims at Fuji - although no one as imploring him to pit.
The main point that I want to reiterate is that far from being whimps, I don’t believe that the M1s were capable of convincingly running the hard - hard combination like Crutchlow even if they wanted to.
