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birdman · Mar 18, 2017

yamfan said:
I see what you mean buddy, but I wasn't talking about prototype tyres, simply more choice of compounds and carcass stiffness for EVERY rider.
This way VR gets his stiff tyres JL gets his softer grippy tyres and every single rider gets his preference. This way we've got no arguments about artificially emasculating riders and bikes.
The best riders will be able perform to their best without compromising and hopefully we'll see great racing.
If MM, MV, JL, VR or whoever does a disappearing act, then good on him, he's the best rider out there and deserves the plaudits.
I get what you're saying about 2007, but the majority of the whinging was done by the Rossi fans used to seeing him walking away with races.
I know the cost implications would upset dorna, but I would love to see every rider able to genuinely be able to perform at his peak without tyre implications...

Actually for me 2007 was like the holy grail of racing seasons. Not only because it was Stoner, it was also Ducati and Bridgestone. It was David vs Goliath in the form of Rossi Yamaha Michelin the absolute powerhouse of MotoGP and David won. I think it was some of the best races I've seen in both 06, 07 thanks mostly to having a genuine tyre war with Bridgestone becoming competitive.

A little known fact, in 07 the championship went 1. Ducati/Bridgestone, 2. Honda/Michelin, 3. Yamaha/Michelin, 4. Suzuki/BS. A truly competitive season. Why would anyone want to mess with that? Oh yes of coarse, the no 3 rider and his massive fan sheep base.

I prefer prototype and don't have a problem with runaway victories. What I was saying was with prototype tires I don't think Rossi would still be competitive, and as we all know keeping Rossi competitive is what keeps Carmelo's calm and was the primary reason the spec tire was ushered in after Ducati attempted to switch to Michelin.

I also agree more tire options would be better. They don't have to be rider specific, never were in fact. All it needs is a soft/hard carcuss option. But it will never happen, as above if Rossi can't make the soft carcuss work and is rendered uncompetitive Carmelo will start having 07 style nightmares again.

birdman · Mar 18, 2017

JKant said:
Introducing a spec tyre was always the right decision.

Its all very well when you're thinking of how it'll impact the top 2 or 3 factory riders but ask the satellite team bosses how they feel about restarting the tyre wars and you'll likely get an earful.

Perhaps, but even then it was done for absolutely the wrong reason, and we all know what that reason was. Why was the tyre war bad? Both brands were competitive. Ducati wanted the war to continue and go back to Michelin.

The spec tires made the satelight teams much more competitive did it? No. I bet they wouldn't have a problem with the tire war restarting, tech 3 were actually subsidised by Dunlop, which didn't hurt the budget. No what you would really get an earful from satelight team bosses would be to bring back the Saturday night specials. but the tire war was fine, in fact satelights won more races with Bridgestone alone during the war than they have during the whole spec tire period.

Keshav · Mar 18, 2017

JKant said:
Introducing a spec tyre was always the right decision. In theory, giving each rider a tyre that's perfect for him is fine but in practice that's not how it would work. One may as well insist that every competing rider be given a factory bike that ideally suits his style.

Rossi & Vinales would need to come to a compromise on the direction of tyre development. Marquez however would get his choice of tyre while forcing Pedrosa to ride on the same one. Lorenzo would get his preferred tyre, Dovizioso would have to make do. And unless Pirelli or Dunlop entered the fray with competitive models, rest of the field would be forced to contract with either Michelin or Bridgestone and take what was on offer irrespective of whether it suited their rider.

Would allowing every rider to pick their own tyre from any manufacturer, fix that? Not really. They'd effectively get a choice of 6 slicks & 4 wets (instead of 3 slicks & 2 wets), overhead at the supplier's end (not knowing how many of its products would get used) would go through the roof and they'd promptly pass that on to the customer. Which is fine if you're HRC and arriving at every round with enough spare parts to equip a third rider. Not so much if you're Aspar or Tech 3 and working within a tight budget.

And this wouldn't solve the basic problem in the any case. Each tyre manufacturer would still need to cater to the needs of the entire field with only two or three tyre types. You cannot guarantee that each rider would get want he wants.

What if Lorenzo wants softer compound but the field is split between those who want a medium compound (say Bridgestones) and those who want an even harder compound (say Michelins)? Even if he can adapt to a medium compound, he'd be hard pressed to compete with Marquez's perfect setup.

In fact, it would be better to just get Michelin to supply two extra tyre types - costs would still increase a great deal but not nearly as much as if they were forced to compete with Bridgestone week to week.

Its all very well when you're thinking of how it'll impact the top 2 or 3 factory riders but ask the satellite team bosses how they feel about restarting the tyre wars and you'll likely get an earful.

In an ideal world. But in fact tire development is the prerogative of the #1 Rider. Everyone else has to go along for the ride. (no pun intended).

Hmm... not really. If you had two or three manufacturers each one would be making tires for the teams wishing to work with said company. It wouldn't make sense for say the factory Yamahas to have to redesign individual bikes for multiply makers. Common sense tells us - all the Yamaha riders across the board would opt to use the same maker as the chassis, brakes and wheels are not drastically different - the way engines across different years are. That said - if there were three companies making tires - each one would in fact have fewer riders to cater to - and could more narrowly focus the design parameters to suit a more similar group of bikes.

...........................................................................Moreover, limited production should logically result in improved quality control

Keshav · Mar 18, 2017

birdman said:
Perhaps, but even then it was done for absolutely the wrong reason, and we all know what that reason was. Why was the tyre war bad? Both brands were competitive. Ducati wanted the war to continue and go back to Michelin.

The spec tires made the satelight teams much more competitive did it? No. I bet they wouldn't have a problem with the tire war restarting, tech 3 were actually subsidised by Dunlop, which didn't hurt the budget. No what you would really get an earful from satelight team bosses would be to bring back the Saturday night specials. but the tire war was fine, in fact satelights won more races with Bridgestone alone during the war than they have during the whole spec tire period.

Excellent.

michaelm · Mar 18, 2017

JKant said:
Introducing a spec tyre was always the right decision. In theory, giving each rider a tyre that's perfect for him is fine but in practice that's not how it would work. One may as well insist that every competing rider be given a factory bike that ideally suits his style.

Rossi & Vinales would need to come to a compromise on the direction of tyre development. Marquez however would get his choice of tyre while forcing Pedrosa to ride on the same one. Lorenzo would get his preferred tyre, Dovizioso would have to make do. And unless Pirelli or Dunlop entered the fray with competitive models, rest of the field would be forced to contract with either Michelin or Bridgestone and take what was on offer irrespective of whether it suited their rider.

Would allowing every rider to pick their own tyre from any manufacturer, fix that? Not really. They'd effectively get a choice of 6 slicks & 4 wets (instead of 3 slicks & 2 wets), overhead at the supplier's end (not knowing how many of its products would get used) would go through the roof and they'd promptly pass that on to the customer. Which is fine if you're HRC and arriving at every round with enough spare parts to equip a third rider. Not so much if you're Aspar or Tech 3 and working within a tight budget.

And this wouldn't solve the basic problem in the any case. Each tyre manufacturer would still need to cater to the needs of the entire field with only two or three tyre types. You cannot guarantee that each rider would get want he wants.

What if Lorenzo wants softer compound but the field is split between those who want a medium compound (say Bridgestones) and those who want an even harder compound (say Michelins)? Even if he can adapt to a medium compound, he'd be hard pressed to compete with Marquez's perfect setup.

In fact, it would be better to just get Michelin to supply two extra tyre types - costs would still increase a great deal but not nearly as much as if they were forced to compete with Bridgestone week to week.

Its all very well when you're thinking of how it'll impact the top 2 or 3 factory riders but ask the satellite team bosses how they feel about restarting the tyre wars and you'll likely get an earful.

Except that the result of the change to a control tyre was no satellite bike winning a race for 7 seasons, the long standing duopoly in premier class GP bike racing being enhanced, and greatly deleterious effects on 3 "second tier" manufacturers with the consequent loss of Kawasaki permanently, Suzuki temporarily, and Ducati becoming uncompetitive (ironically later affecting Dorna's golden boy), all 3 of whom attributed their problems to the lack of a suitable tyre.

Dorna's stuff-ups usually have multiple motives not all of them bad, and they may have genuinely thought the control tyre would be fairer and even the field/"improve the racing" as some including Jumkie believed at the time, but it was predictable this wouldn't be the result, with Ducati in fact obviously predicting same given they wanted to start again from scratch with Michelin, and people with such diverse allegiances as Roger/Chopperman and I myself being opposed to a control tyre. What had been unfair as well as unsustainable financially for at least one of the tyre companies was the SNS tyre with tiered provision of that tyre as has been said, but this had already been abolished 2 seasons before the control tyre came in. Michelin and Bridgestone also both explicitly said that a continued tyre war was their preference.

If you don't think the control tyre was at least partly aimed at thwarting an unpopular rider I give you the 2012 season, when that rider's preferred tyre was again removed after he won a second title. I have also always thought there was a second self-serving motive for Dorna, in that I believe during the tyre war only some of the teams, usually the top teams, got their tyres for free, while Dorna had to subsidise the tyre budget of some of the satellite teams. So the control tyre was probably cost saving, but mainly for Dorna.

Keshav · Mar 18, 2017

michaelm said:
Except that the result of the change to a control tyre was no satellite bike winning a race for 7 seasons, the long standing duopoly in premier class GP bike racing being enhanced, and greatly deleterious effects on 3 "second tier" manufacturers with the consequent loss of Kawasaki permanently, Suzuki temporarily, and Ducati becoming uncompetitive (ironically later affecting Dorna's golden boy), all 3 of whom attributed their problems to the lack of a suitable tyre.

Dorna's stuff-ups usually have multiple motives not all of them bad, and they may have genuinely thought the control tyre would be fairer and even the field/"improve the racing" as some including Jumkie believed at the time, but it was predictable this wouldn't be the result, with Ducati in fact obviously predicting same given they wanted to start again from scratch with Michelin, and people with such diverse allegiances as Roger/Chopperman and I myself being opposed to a control tyre. What had been unfair as well as unsustainable financially for at least one of the tyre companies was the SNS tyre with tiered provision of that tyre as has been said, but this had already been abolished 2 seasons before the control tyre came in. Michelin and Bridgestone also both explicitly said that a continued tyre war was their preference.

If you don't think the control tyre was at least partly aimed at thwarting an unpopular rider I give you the 2012 season, when that rider's preferred tyre was again removed after he won a second title. I have also always thought there was a second self-serving motive for Dorna, in that I believe during the tyre war only some of the teams, usually the top teams, got their tyres for free, while Dorna had to subsidise the tyre budget of some of the satellite teams. So the control tyre was probably cost saving, but mainly for Dorna.

I also thought control tires would be good. Just didn't thoroughly think it through. Seen the error of my ways.

yamfan · Mar 18, 2017

michaelm said:
Except that the result of the change to a control tyre was no satellite bike winning a race for 7 seasons, the long standing duopoly in premier class GP bike racing being enhanced, and greatly deleterious effects on 3 "second tier" manufacturers with the consequent loss of Kawasaki permanently, Suzuki temporarily, and Ducati becoming uncompetitive (ironically later affecting Dorna's golden boy), all 3 of whom attributed their problems to the lack of a suitable tyre.

Dorna's stuff-ups usually have multiple motives not all of them bad, and they may have genuinely thought the control tyre would be fairer and even the field/"improve the racing" as some including Jumkie believed at the time, but it was predictable this wouldn't be the result, with Ducati in fact obviously predicting same given they wanted to start again from scratch with Michelin, and people with such diverse allegiances as Roger/Chopperman and I myself being opposed to a control tyre. What had been unfair as well as unsustainable financially for at least one of the tyre companies was the SNS tyre with tiered provision of that tyre as has been said, but this had already been abolished 2 seasons before the control tyre came in. Michelin and Bridgestone also both explicitly said that a continued tyre war was their preference.

If you don't think the control tyre was at least partly aimed at thwarting an unpopular rider I give you the 2012 season, when that rider's preferred tyre was again removed after he won a second title. I have also always thought there was a second self-serving motive for Dorna, in that I believe during the tyre war only some of the teams, usually the top teams, got their tyres for free, while Dorna had to subsidise the tyre budget of some of the satellite teams. So the control tyre was probably cost saving, but mainly for Dorna.

2015 at assen when the softer grippier tyre were withdrawn on "safety" terms after Lorenzo had won several races on the bounce with them. The cool weather was ideal for them and Marquez and Dani were asked by the journalists why these "preferred" tyres were withdrawn. Marquez said "we all know why, but we daren't say". Another blatant dorna interference to stem the tide of Lorenzo's momentum and keep the racing interesting as far as their majority of fans are concerned.
This is the sort of behaviour that makes me think, give all riders their own personal choice of tyres currently made by the chosen manufacturer.
Casey was indeed robbed by the tyre changes, wasn't a certain person instrumental in voting against Casey and later admitting it wasn't the best choice for him but he went against Casey's choice anyway as it was the logical thing for him to do.
The accumulation of things like this and the abuse he and Adriana received led to Casey retiring from the sport. I'm convinced if he'd been treated fairly and not been targeted by the golden one and his minions, he'd have continued racing. Ducati possibly could've had another title with that guy on their bike again.
One thing is for certain, NO WAY did he run away from Marc Marquez...

Gaz · Mar 18, 2017

JKant said:
Introducing a spec tyre was always the right decision. In theory, giving each rider a tyre that's perfect for him is fine but in practice that's not how it would work. One may as well insist that every competing rider be given a factory bike that ideally suits his style.

Disagree and here is why.

Tyre wars allow or at least expidite the development of tyres, and of course with more manufacturers then it goes to say that the options for tyres are increased exponentially which can easily translate to improved racing as well as safety (riders using their preferred tyre construction rather than having to use a generic type).

I stated some time back and will say it again, that it is relatively easy within a tyre war scenario to mandate that every type of tyre MUST be available to any rider and if that tyre cannot be made available to the entire field should they so choose it, then that tyre is not allowed to be used by any rider and so forth. Essentially, allow a tyre to be developed for Valentino but he can only use that tyre if there are enough for the entire field, same for Marquez etc.

Yes, it may increase costs to the tyre company but over time this would be offset by identifying trends and thus eventually you will see a concentration of tyre construction types that is greater than that of today, but less than a one type for every rider.

IMO here but tyres are the restricting aspect to performance and so by allowing the bike/rider to extract maximum performance we will see genuine 'best wins' rather than 'best suited wins' type of situations.

Now, this goes without saying but riders skilled with tyres will be able to provide feedback that lesser skilled riders cannot (removing data from the picture) but by opening up the availability of special construction tyres we are likely to see occasions such as the Elias win.

Of course, one issue may well be contracts between teams and tyre suppliers but then that team is simply restricted to tyres by their contracted brand and where a team may not be contracted, hell, allow them to swap on a 'buy them' method.

This may well see more tyre manufacturers show an interest which (IMO) is an improvement on a 'you ride what we develop' approach, or worse still 'you ride what we are told to build'.

p4p1 · Mar 18, 2017

Only a fool would/will like the current control tyre. DORNA has a history of interfering with tyres and strange coincidences take place all too often. it's very clear that DORNA has been doing things that are unsporting for the sake of a show and as most on this board agree to prop up its biggest money maker. The single control tyre gives all the power to the owners who's only interest are financial and takes it away from the riders, teams and manufacturers who's main interest is winning. While talent will always shine through, a favourable tyre can prop someone up and an unfavourable tyre can and has hampered those who DORNA don't see as all that marketable.

As a Marquez fan, I do believe he is slightly lucky that he seems to like a similar tyre to Rossi.

moto vudu · Mar 19, 2017

p4p1 said:
Only a fool would/will like the current control tyre. DORNA has a history of interfering with tyres and strange coincidences take place all too often. it's very clear that DORNA has been doing things that are unsporting for the sake of a show and as most on this board agree to prop up its biggest money maker. The single control tyre gives all the power to the owners who's only interest are financial and takes it away from the riders, teams and manufacturers who's main interest is winning. While talent will always shine through, a favourable tyre can prop someone up and an unfavourable tyre can and has hampered those who DORNA don't see as all that marketable.

As a Marquez fan, I do believe he is slightly lucky that he seems to like a similar tyre to Rossi.

Rossi is the rider that brings in the most money, but Repsol / HRC invest the most money into MotoGP. Dorna would lose Rossi before they let Repsol go, so I could argue they have an interest in tires that favor Marquez. It's all about SPAIN, not Rossi & Italy. If we want to play the conspiracy game, there's all sorts of scenarios that can be dreamed up.

moto vudu · Mar 19, 2017

Food for the conspiracy nuts...

Special tires for a specific rider wouldn't even be necessary now that the Spec ECU is in place. If Dorna wanted to give a rider an advantage, they could modify the ECU for his bike to allow for additional operating parameters or traction control settings that aren't available to anyone else. It's not like the other teams would ever get to inspect the ECU programming used on other bikes.

michaelm · Mar 19, 2017

moto vudu said:
Food for the conspiracy nuts...

Special tires for a specific rider wouldn't even be necessary now that the Spec ECU is in place. If Dorna wanted to give a rider an advantage, they could modify the ECU for his bike to allow for additional operating parameters or traction control settings that aren't available to anyone else. It's not like the other teams would ever get to inspect the ECU programming used on other bikes.

Rich for a Valentino supporter to talk conspiracy nuts after a certain Sepang press conference in 2015.

I have always been happy for Valentino to have whatever tyre his heart desires, and had no problem with him getting on the Bridgestones in 2008 as I expressed on the voluminous "tyre wars" threads at the time.

It is other riders or the manufacturers of the bikes they ride not being able to source suitable tyres, and even more so having suitable tyres taken away from them with which I have a problem, and if that view qualifies for being a conspiracy nut the company of conspiracy nuts includes 3 (EDIT 4 come to think of it including Honda in 2012) manufacturers of premier class GP racing bikes and several leading, in fact championship winning, riders.

moto vudu · Mar 19, 2017

michaelm said:
Rich for a Valentino supporter to talk conspiracy nuts after a certain Sepang press conference in 2015.

I have always been happy for Valentino to have whatever tyre his heart desires, and had no problem with him grtting on the Bridgestones in 2008 as I expressed on the voluminous "tyre wars" threads at the time.

It is other riders or the manufacturers of the bikes they ride not being able to source suitable tyres, and even more so having suitable tyres taken away from them with which I have a problem, and if that view qualifies for being a conspiracy nut the company of conspiracy nuts includes 3 manufacturers of premier class GP racing bikes and several leading, in fact championship winning, riders.

Clearly you don't have a very big problem with it because you still enjoy to watch and discuss the sport. As long as people are tuning in to watch the racing, that's all that matters as far as Dorna is concerned. They need to keep changing things to keep it interesting, maybe after this Michelin era they'll bring back the tire wars for a few seasons.

michaelm · Mar 19, 2017

moto vudu said:
Rossi is the rider that brings in the most money, but Repsol / HRC invest the most money into MotoGP. Dorna would lose Rossi before they let Repsol go, so I could argue they have an interest in tires that favor Marquez. It's all about SPAIN, not Rossi & Italy. If we want to play the conspiracy game, there's all sorts of scenarios that can be dreamed up.

Except that Dorna were at loggerheads with Honda when Stoner was winning for them, with Honda/HRC vociferously complaining about the aforementioned tyre withdrawal in 2012 among other things.

Ezy is many things, but a venture capitalist/merchant banker and media content provider primarily, and you are kidding yourself if you think he would discriminate on nationalistic grounds, particularly given the significant ownership last I heard of Bridgepoint Capital by the like of Canadian superannuation/pension funds etc.

michaelm · Mar 19, 2017

moto vudu said:
Clearly you don't have a very big problem with it because you still enjoy to watch and discuss the sport. As long as people are tuning in to watch the racing, that's all that matters as far as Dorna is concerned. They need to keep changing things to keep it interesting, maybe after this Michelin era they'll bring back the tire wars for a few seasons.

Your "arguments" get more vapid by the post. Dorna are on all evidence fairly obviously too incompetent to contrive a successful conspiracy anyway, and riders I respect and admire have won all but 2 of the last 11 championships, and the other 2 were won by a rider I respected at the time he won those titles.

Keshav · Mar 19, 2017

moto vudu said:
Rossi is the rider that brings in the most money, but Repsol / HRC invest the most money into MotoGP. Dorna would lose Rossi before they let Repsol go, so I could argue they have an interest in tires that favor Marquez. It's all about SPAIN, not Rossi & Italy. If we want to play the conspiracy game, there's all sorts of scenarios that can be dreamed up.

I don't think of the tire issue in terms of conspiracy. Irritated as I may be by the results of decisions made - these guys are businessmen and when the bottom line motivates them (as is the case with most all big-biz types) short-sightedness prevails. I expect guys like Carmello in their heart of hearts - mostly think of themselves as pragmatic. Super-rich types, like ....... politicians, don't ever look in the mirror and think, "Oh yeah... I'm a scumbag ......." Well, except for 45.

JKant · Mar 19, 2017

birdman said:
The spec tires made the satelight teams much more competitive did it? No. I bet they wouldn't have a problem with the tire war restarting, tech 3 were actually subsidised by Dunlop, which didn't hurt the budget. No what you would really get an earful from satelight team bosses would be to bring back the Saturday night specials. but the tire war was fine,

Competitive? Question is, who's paying for this? Please take a look at any of Herve Poncharal's interviews and you'll see why running a team with his budget is not just a challenge but constant source of frustration.

in fact satelights won more races with Bridgestone alone during the war than they have during the whole spec tire period.

Which has nothing to do with the tyre, per se. When Tech 3s take in the ex-YRT M1s, they will run them on the same tyres they were designed for. And even if they find that another supplier is offering better tyres, the factory teams will quicker to switch leaving the performance gap essentially unchanged.

As far as the record is concerned, once Stoner, Pedrosa & Lorenzo joined Rossi in the premier class, race victories quite predictably dried up for rest of the field.

In 2007, only two other riders won a race, both on factory bikes (GSV-R & GP7).

In 2008, before the spec tyre era, the satellites accounted for only two podiums and that's it. Next year on the spec Bridgestones, again two podiums.

JKant · Mar 19, 2017

Keshav said:
In an ideal world. But in fact tire development is the prerogative of the #1 Rider. Everyone else has to go along for the ride. (no pun intended).

Exactly. Yamaha doesn't have #1 rider so they take the median path. Marquez, Lorenzo & Iannone get their way, while Pedrosa, Dovizioso & Rins have to like it or lump it. Same for Aprilia, KTM & the satellites.

Hmm... not really. If you had two or three manufacturers each one would be making tires for the teams wishing to work with said company. It wouldn't make sense for say the factory Yamahas to have to redesign individual bikes for multiply makers. Common sense tells us - all the Yamaha riders across the board would opt to use the same maker as the chassis, brakes and wheels are not drastically different - the way engines across different years are. That said - if there were three companies making tires - each one would in fact have fewer riders to cater to - and could more narrowly focus the design parameters to suit a more similar group of bikes.

This is how the existing model, prior to the introduction of spec tires, was expected to function. Didn't work that way in practice.

For one, the series would quickly reduce to two suppliers. Dunlop or Pirelli may spend a season or two supplying a smaller team that couldn't afford something better but eventually they'd get forced out.

The two that remain will compete primarily for the bragging rights & publicity associated with race wins and podiums. Which is fine if you're Honda or Yamaha - not so much if you're KTM or Aprilia.

The argument about the expense of the adapting a bike to a tyre to find those extra tenths also gets turned on its head. The teams with the largest budgets, consistently vying for race wins get to determine the direction of tyre development. The teams with the smallest budgets are forced to adapt their bikes to the available tyres. Its like a regressive taxation system.

And even that works only as long as the two tyre suppliers are competitive. When one of them fails to be competitive as the Michelin fronts were in the latter half of 2008, they can potentially cripple the rider. And then you have Lorenzo finishing in 10th place after qualifying 17th on the grid at Brno (with Pedrosa 15th), 40 seconds behind Rossi's Bridgestone-shod M1 that took first place. Sounds familiar.

Moreover, limited production should logically result in improved quality control

Not necessarily. I'd argue a very rapid development thrust is actually a bigger impediment to a stable production process (compared to scaling up production).

Also, while Michelin had a couple of ignominious failures this year, we have seen them happen in the non-spec era as well. Mugello 2004, for example, where Tamada's Bridgestones chunked out while Nakano's exploded at 200 mph.

JKant · Mar 19, 2017

Gaz said:
I stated some time back and will say it again, that it is relatively easy within a tyre war scenario to mandate that every type of tyre MUST be available to any rider and if that tyre cannot be made available to the entire field should they so choose it, then that tyre is not allowed to be used by any rider and so forth. Essentially, allow a tyre to be developed for Valentino but he can only use that tyre if there are enough for the entire field, same for Marquez etc.

Yes, it may increase costs to the tyre company but over time this would be offset by identifying trends and thus eventually you will see a concentration of tyre construction types that is greater than that of today, but less than a one type for every rider.

This is the crux of the argument. This model, which is very different from the more conventional model advocated by Keshav, wouldn't just increase costs it would send them through the roof.

The top 2 or 3 factory riders might get their preferred tyre (and I emphasize 'might', since there are only two tyre suppliers for all practical purposes) but the smaller teams, both factory & non-factory, would be very badly hit.

As things stand today, Michelin provides free tyres to every team, ~550 per weekend for 2017 IIRC, costing them €30-40 mil/yr (?), in return for exclusive advertising rights for the event.

Once you mandate that Bridgestone must match that for every rider, that's twice as many tyres being shipped to each round, twice as much in costs but without the advertising to pay for it all.

Which means the teams pay for the tyres - which is fine for HRC, not so much for Aspar.

Bridgestone IIRC was paying over €20 mil per season to outfit the field which is over €1 mil per rider. Considering it costs a satellite team ~€4 mil per rider over a full season, paying for just spec tyres would cost them an extra 25%.

Paying for access to twice as many tyres in the midst of a tyre war? 50% more? 60% more?

They could reduce costs through exclusive contracts - but that undoes the basic premise viz. providing every rider with 'choice'. That would become a luxury available only to the larger factory teams and even they are unlikely to turn down the advertising revenue available through exclusive contracts.

#22 · Mar 19, 2017

moto vudu said:
Food for the conspiracy nuts...

Special tires for a specific rider wouldn't even be necessary now that the Spec ECU is in place. If Dorna wanted to give a rider an advantage, they could modify the ECU for his bike to allow for additional operating parameters or traction control settings that aren't available to anyone else. It's not like the other teams would ever get to inspect the ECU programming used on other bikes.

A valid point, but a preferred tyre would give more advantages than a modified ECU power map/curve. What you also have to remember is the ECU map is mainly limited by the fuel capacity. Even if they were able to put out more power or improved TC than another rider's ECU, the limiting factor is the tyre.

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