Guareschi: the riders should be mad

mylexicon · Jul 18, 2011

Beef Supreme said:
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.

Where you a fan before 2008? 2006 was blazing hot and the track had just gotten a shoddy resurface. IIRC they resurfaced again in 2007 and Michelin guessed wrong regarding compounds which caused an embarrassing race result, public derision from the riders, and it was unsafe to boot. In 2008 they only offered hard compound tires, and when the heat didn't materialize, they were left with a shortage of decent tires for the race.

It was serious debacle that made Michelin look incompetent, but it had everything to do with extenuating circumstances, rules changes, and Michelin's compounds which were designed to work well in a very narrow window of conditions.

beefsupreme · Jul 18, 2011

mylexicon said:
Where you a fan before 2008?

What does that have to do with Michelin not being able to supply adequate tires with the temperature known weeks in advance? If your point is that Laguna '08 wasn't Michelin's first screw-up, that doesn't mitigate the depth of the incident and it had nothing to do with Bridgestone.

mylexicon said:
Michelin's compounds which were designed to work well in a very narrow window of conditions.

Is that a feature or a bug?

SuperShinya56 · Jul 18, 2011

Yeah..... blame the effin' tires for your mistakes, riders !!

Everyone's on the same freaking tires, even if they are made of space-age ice compound that's purposely developed, designed, and built for the sole purpose of bucking off a racer from his bike........ YOU ADAPT. Everyone's in the same boat.

mylexicon · Jul 18, 2011

Beef Supreme said:
What does that have to do with Michelin not being able to supply adequate tires with the temperature known weeks in advance? If your point is that Laguna '08 wasn't Michelin's first screw-up, that doesn't mitigate the depth of the incident and it had nothing to do with Bridgestone.

Is that a feature or a bug?

They use data from previous years to design the tires. If the conditions are strange or if the circuit has been resurfaced numerous times they have to guess. When the tire rules change numerous times during the same period, the conditions are highly unstable as they are at Laguna, and Michelin tires work in a narrow band of conditions; a serious problem is a real possibility.

Michelin had been doing overnight specials for a long time, and they had won the last 12-13 championships IIRC. Was it a bug? No, it was quite intentional and lucratively successful before overnight specials were banned and before fuel and engine capacity were reduced.

beefsupreme · Jul 18, 2011

mylexicon said:
Michelin had been doing overnight specials for a long time, and they had won the last 12-13 championships IIRC. Was it a bug? No, it was quite intentional and lucratively successful before overnight specials were banned and before fuel and engine capacity were reduced.

They won because they had no real competition between Rainey's Dunlop era and Bridgestone's ascendance. Bridgestone had a wider performance envelope even before overnight specials were banned, and the rules pushing things further in that direction only meant that racing had more relevance to real-world tire development.

Is there any evidence that there are more crashes on Bridgestone's control tires than there were during Michelin's virtually uncontested years? I can understand riders wanting a choice of tires that will even out climatic differences, but it seems as if the unspoken complaint in this thread is that the control tire is somehow dangerous, which is nowhere near obvious.

If nothing else, having a control tire means no one gets "A" rubber vs "B" rubber, and teams don't have to pay for them, which is a good thing to anyone but rubber sniffers.

ptk50 · Jul 19, 2011

SuperShinya56 said:
Yeah..... blame the effin' tires for your mistakes, riders !!

Everyone's on the same freaking tires, even if they are made of space-age ice compound that's purposely developed, designed, and built for the sole purpose of bucking off a racer from his bike........ YOU ADAPT. Everyone's in the same boat.

Hi Super,

I'd say you hit the nail on the head. It used to be that the tires went "off" towards the end and some riders - notably Rossi - demonstrated exceptional skills at still racing on them. Now it's sort of changed round - the compounds are holding up better over full distance, but need to be treated with caution in the early laps. I'm sure there'll be cries of "over - simplification' , but bottom line is as you say - ADAPT

ptk50 · Jul 19, 2011

Beef Supreme said:
They won because they had no real competition between Rainey's Dunlop era and Bridgestone's ascendance. Bridgestone had a wider performance envelope even before overnight specials were banned, and the rules pushing things further in that direction only meant that racing had more relevance to real-world tire development.

Is there any evidence that there are more crashes on Bridgestone's control tires than there were during Michelin's virtually uncontested years? I can understand riders wanting a choice of tires that will even out climatic differences, but it seems as if the unspoken complaint in this thread is that the control tire is somehow dangerous, which is nowhere near obvious.If nothing else, having a control tire means no one gets "A" rubber vs "B" rubber, and teams don't have to pay for them, which is a good thing to anyone but rubber sniffers.

" it seems as if the unspoken complaint in this thread is that the control tire is somehow dangerous, which is nowhere near obvious."

looking at the FP1 at Sachsenring - that did appear to be the case - it did look like Bridgestone had brought the wrong product - and their PR work since then supports that.

"Is there any evidence that there are more crashes on Bridgestone's control tires than there were during Michelin's virtually uncontested years?"

That could be really tricky to research - given the changes in engines, chassis design and Michelin having had a whole variety of tires out there for different riders vs Bridgestones currently greatly limited choices.

"having a control tire means no one gets "A" rubber vs "B" rubber, and teams don't have to pay for them, which is a good thing to anyone but rubber sniffers"

Imposing tires - ie controlled, standardized equipment - and making it "free" in a prototypes only series is ImO definitely a tinge of oxy-moronism

beefsupreme · Jul 19, 2011

ptk50 said:
a prototypes only series

MotoGP is a prototype-only series similar to the way the Supreme Court is an apolitical judicial referee:

And, in fact, where does this idea that GP racing being reserved for prototypes come from anyway? In earlier times, manufactures raced with modified versions of their production engines. If you look for historic precedents that make it clear that the FIM did not originally intend to differentiate between prototypes and production-derived machines, there are many examples… Jack Findlay became the first ever 500 winner on a two-stroke when he won the Ulster in 1971 on a modified version of the Suzuki TR500 twin.

Slotting Suzuki and Kawasaki engines into Seeley frames was a smart way to go 500 racing in the early seventies. And when Findlay and Danielli Fontana (of brake fame) got together to build their Suzuki TR500-powwered “JADA” there was no reason for the FIM to question whether this was a “prototype.” Had GP racing engines been four strokes instead of turning exclusively to two-stroke power (with the exception of the oval-piston Honda NR500 from 1979 through 1981), we would certainly have seen direct crossovers from production to racing or from racing to production.

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