Guareschi: the riders should be mad

That Bridgestone screwed up was a possible source of rumor was inevitable.

Apparently all the riders bar Karel Abraham attended the riders safety meeting last night to voice their displeasure at the current Bridgestone control tires after a spate of cold tire crashes so far this season. They demanded an immediate change to the tire regulations which would see an increased allocation of three front and three rear compounds at their disposal.....but will this really fix the current problems...maybe a softer compound will help with the heat issues but the introduction of a control tire seems to be an unmitigated disaster that has already resulted in a few riders sustaining serious injuries (Bautista, Edwards, Rossi, Crutchlow) from these spec tires.



IMO they should allow another company like Pirelli/Dunlop/Michellin to offer an alternative set of spec tires in a pseudo tire war and then allow each rider to choose from all the different compounds available - maybe up to six compounds would be feasible. This would still offer the prospect of competition which in turn helps develop new technologies for the commercial market place at a faster pace.



We could also see some interesting mixes of front/rear tires combinations from the competing manufacturers - would make for some interesting marketing with dual peak podium hats



What say ye on this issue?

jazkat said:

also Stoner said the session should have been red flagged and reignited the debate about the number of tyres available and the spread of their characteristics





MotoGP Germany: Stoner disappointed with race direction decision





Repsol Honda's Casey Stoner is disappointed race direction didn't stop the opening MotoGP free practice session at the Sachsenring after he, Valentino Rossi, Toni Elias and Dani Pedrosa all crashed in the same corner within a couple of laps of each other.



All four men are very experienced racers and the Australian said the sessions should have been red-flagged in order to check what was causing the accidents instead of riders being allowed to carry on regardless.



"I was disappointed there wasn't a red flag. After my own crash I made a mistake, whatever, but there was one after another after another and no red flag. What if all of us had got injured and we couldn't ride for the next three races? Twelve bikes on the grid? I couldn't believe they left it going," said the Australian.



"It could have happened to anyone, it just caught you out that quick. For me it was definitely a cold tyre but after I'd done a couple of runs it still wanted to go that easily. I am disappointed they didn't even check it out instead of just leaving us to keep going."Stoner has watched his own crash on action replays and was amazed by how spectacular it was. He went for an X-ray afterwards but nothing was found. A team insider says he was shaken up by the accident.



"You're telling me (it was spectacular). I've looked at the replay and by the time it catches me the front has already gone. I'd come from the left, literally gone over to the right and it was gone. So I closed it and I'm trying to pick it up and it just wouldn't come back and then the rear came round. I probably should have just let the front go which would have been easier than going right up and over," Stoner added.



"Considering how big the crash was I got away reasonably lucky today. I'm bruised and hurt but it could have been a lot worse. I was expecting bike on top of me and all kinds of things but we got lucky with where we were. As you saw I wasn't the only one with problems. With the wind an conditions today, it was tough."

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Sorry Jaz...just started a similar topic to yours. Its a sticky situation (pardon the pun).

Bridgestone do what Dorna tell them to do. I doubt they would be bringing shoddy tires if the tire war were still around, I doubt Bridgestone would be bringing so few compounds and carcasses if the teams were willing to pay for much better products.



What pisses me off is that the riders can't handle five bad sessions with crappy tires, but they have tolerated five years of bad fuel regulations and bad engine regulations without directing any rage at the MSMA. The riders are more than happy to piss on people who don't pay them. When it's time to confront their employers, the riders are tacit. Rossi is the exception. I respect him for attacking the 800lb gorilla regarding fuel, electronics, and engine capacity.

Valid points from a few points of view, including mylexicon's that bridgestone are providing the tyres for free. I wouldn't let dorna off the hook though, neither bridgestone nor michelin wanted a control tyre, and the need to engineer the bikes to suit the tyres rather than the reverse has probably resulted in there being little if any overall cost saving. The current tyre is also completely unsuited to some riders, notably tony elias, although I guess this is less inequitable than the good tyres only going to a favoured few.



As lex says, congratulations to rossi for questioning the formula in general, but I think it is understandable that the riders are more animated by real and threatened injuries, at least 4 including rossi's last year by squiggle's count on the other thread.



The tyre thing is possibly the explanation for stoner not being "on it" the last 2 races and so far this weekend; as I have hypothesised previously I think he needs conditions in which the bridgestone hard tyre works to show his best, and if it is a cool race I would favour lorenzo and perhaps even pedrosa.

michaelm said:

Valid points from a few points of view, including mylexicon's that bridgestone are providing the tyres for free. I wouldn't let dorna off the hook though, neither bridgestone or michelin wanted a control tyre, and the need to engineer the bikes to suit the tyres rather than the reverse has probably resulted in there being little if any overall cost saving. The current tyre isalso completely unsuited to some riders, notably tony elias, although I guess this is less inequitable than the good tyres only going to a favoured few.



As lex says, congratulations to rossi for questioning the formula in general, but I think it is understandable that the riders are more animated by real and threatened injuries, at least 4 including rossi's last year by squiggle's count on the the other thread.



The tyre thing is possibly the explanation for stoner not being "on it" the last 2 races and so far this weekend; as I have hypothesised previously I think he needs conditions in which the bridgestone hard tyre works to show his best, and if it is a cool race I would favour lorenzo and perhaps even pedrosa.

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I completely agree with this, the rubber needs to evolve with the machinery as it has done in the past, and whether its from Dorna's mismanagement or Bridgestones complacency, the rubber is being increasingly found wanting

from most of the field.

I believe what Dorna was trying to avoid with the one supplier rule was favorable rubber at particular circuits for particular riders. As this seems to be happening anyway now, maybe even moreso, you have to wonder if there's not scope to bring in Pirelli, Dunlop and Michelin and try to at least develop the tyres for varying styles and certainly for extreme variations in climatic conditions.

I've been saying it for months!!



Imagine if they'd lost 3 of their top draw cards due to injury based on sub-standard rubber..........

Finally the rumblings are getting louder

Let's then split the races into two as they do in WSBK, and forget the control tire. Making tires that last half-race distance is much easier, let Dunlop and Pirelli compete against Bridgestone and Michelin! They would all perform very much the same. And the two-starts formula is what makes WSBK such a good show. Races are not left the time to become processional.

J4rn0 said:

Let's then split the races into two as they do in WSBK, and forget the control tire. Making tires that last half-race distance is much easier, let Dunlop and Pirelli compete against Bridgestone and Michelin!

They would all perform very much the same. And the two-starts formula is what makes WSBK such a good show. Races are not left the time to become processional.

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I would love to see GP go to a 2 race format, but i dont think the 20% difference in laps between WSBK and GP is what makes GP processional. They seem to become that early in a race and continue that way to the finish.

povol said:

I would love to see GP go to a 2 race format, but i dont think the 20% difference in laps between WSBK and GP is what makes GP processional. They seem to become that early in a race and continue that way to the finish.

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I agree, and it could just end up being 2 processional races instead of one..........Actually Germany has been a really good comparison with last year with the weather behaving more than at most other circuits. In general it seems that most aren't really that much quicker at all. Tyres are the most important factor, and with so little choice to fix issues, big problems like what Elias faces, just can't be fixed. Making these competitors redundant, when they could easily be more competitive.

Mr Squiggle said:

Apparently all the riders bar Karel Abraham attended the riders safety meeting last night to voice their displeasure at the current Bridgestone control tires after a spate of cold tire crashes so far this season. They demanded an immediate change to the tire regulations which would see an increased allocation of three front and three rear compounds at their disposal.....but will this really fix the current problems...maybe a softer compound will help with the heat issues but the introduction of a control tire seems to be an unmitigated disaster that has already resulted in a few riders sustaining serious injuries (Bautista, Edwards, Rossi, Crutchlow) from these spec tires.



IMO they should allow another company like Pirelli/Dunlop/Michellin to offer an alternative set of spec tires in a pseudo tire war and then allow each rider to choose from all the different compounds available - maybe up to six compounds would be feasible. This would still offer the prospect of competition which in turn helps develop new technologies for the commercial market place at a faster pace.

We could also see some interesting mixes of front/rear tires combinations from the competing manufacturers - would make for some interesting marketing with dual peak podium hats

What say ye on this issue?

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Absolutely - this one tire rule sucks --



Such an obvious and simple solution - WTF doesn't it happem???

Mr Squiggle said:

IMO they should allow another company like Pirelli/Dunlop/Michellin to offer an alternative set of spec tires in a pseudo tire war and then allow each rider to choose from all the different compounds available - maybe up to six compounds would be feasible. This would still offer the prospect of competition which in turn helps develop new technologies for the commercial market place at a faster pace.



We could also see some interesting mixes of front/rear tires combinations from the competing manufacturers - would make for some interesting marketing with dual peak podium hats

What say ye on this issue?

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If you want my personal opinion, they already tried a control tire war in 2008. You may or may not remember the emergency tire meetings at the end of 2007, the publicly known result of those meetings was Rossi to Bridgestone for 2008, but the much less well publicized consequences in 2008 were very interesting. Bridgestone's golden boy, Stoner, was screaming bloody murder about changes to the tires. Bridgestone's development manufacturer, Ducati, decided that the 2007 bike wasn't good enough anymore and they started feverish chassis development on the GP8. Finally, Bridgestone introduced a new Rossi-Stoner front Bridgestone tire. The onboard footage of the tire showed that it had a very unusual performance attribute--when the bike was at full lean, the edge would flatten to increase the size of the contact patch.



Imo, the random tidbits of information point in the direction of a regulated control tire. Bridgestone and Michelin ran a regulated control tire in F1 so they are no doubt familiar with the ins and outs of tire regs. I think they specified a front tire profile or perhaps they even created a spec carcass. In theory, controlling the profile of the tire allows the governing body to control the size of the contact patch at full lean which ultimately dictates the softness of the compound which ultimately controls corner entry speed. The obvious way around the regulations is to use F1 tire compound technology to create highly elastic compounds that alter the size of the contact patch. This was actually how they were supposed to do the tire war in WSBK in 2003 before IMS appointed Pirelli.



Long story short, Dorna don't know how to get it done or they don't have the enforcement technology for a regulated tire war. Michelin and Bridgestone failed to reach an understanding regarding tire compound technology which led to Michelin's acrimonious withdrawal from MotoGP. Bridgestone were probably railroaded into supplying control tires for upsetting the apple cart. Dorna have hired Bridgestone's ex-racing director and I suspect, though I can't be certain, that he is drafting regulations and finding technical personnel to regulate some kind of a control tire war (fingers crossed).

mylexicon said:

Michelin and Bridgestone failed to reach an understanding regarding tire compound technology which led to Michelin's acrimonious withdrawal from MotoGP.

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I think Michelin screwed themselves just fine without Bridgestone's "secret" help. Once Pedrosa demanded and got the Bridgestones and Lorenzo was set to follow, Michelin's line in the sand that they supply at least one factory team was going to be crossed. In other words, they resigned before they were impeached.

Beef Supreme said:

I think Michelin screwed themselves just fine without Bridgestone's "secret" help. Once Pedrosa demanded and got the Bridgestones and Lorenzo was set to follow, Michelin's line in the sand that they supply at least one factory team was going to be crossed. In other words, they resigned before they were impeached.

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They had a factory team who was willing to work with them. In fact, Ducati were trying to ditch Bridgestone and form an alliance with Suzuki and Kawasaki to keep Michelin in the sport. MotoGP had an agreement that the supply would be at least 60%-40% or it would trigger a control tire. Furthermore, I hardly find it prudent to criticize Michelin for struggling to adapt after overnight specials were canceled in the name of cost suppression; especially at Laguna where track temperatures can swing 50 degrees in a single day. Michelin surrendered b/c they are French and, imo, b/c Bridgestone was using technology that Michelin were not willing to introduce.



AFAIK, Michelin developed the technology to its modern extreme in F1 when they helped Renault down Ferrari/Bridgestone/Schumacher. Maybe this was revenge, or maybe Bridgestone suspected Michelin would use it if they didn't.

mylexicon said:

Furthermore, I hardly find it prudent to criticize Michelin for struggling to adapt after overnight specials were canceled in the name of cost suppression; especially at Laguna where track temperatures can swing 50 degrees in a single day.

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When loyal company man Edwards was compelled to say “Stevie Wonder could have made a better tire selection than Michelin”, you know they've blundered badly. In the weeks leading up to July 20, 2008, the average high was 65F and on race day it was 62F -- a company that can't deal with a 3 degree difference is one that shouldn't be supplying tires.