Michelin vows to improve tyre stategies
Added on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor
Michelin vows to improve tyre stategies
Michelin has pledged to share more information between teams in an attempt to avoid a repeat of their poor performance at Laguna Seca on Sunday.
The French manufacturer admitted that they failed to provide enough grip for their riders after wrongly predicting the circuit conditions and temperature in California at the weekend, leading to a ‘conservative’ tyre strategy.
Speaking to motogp.com, Jean-Phillippe Weber, Michelin’s Director of Motorcycle Racing said: “The starting point of our difficulties at the weekend was the problems we had last year, when the track was more aggressive and the track temperature higher than expected, which gave us wear problems.
“This year the track was much less aggressive. Also, the track temperature was lower than last year, but in fact not so bad because we saw the high 40s on Friday. Based on last year´s situation we were too conservative, with too-hard constructions and compounds which gave reduced performance. Our riders had only a limited supply of tyres they could use for the race, so they had to work with harder tyres during practice.”
Michelin also promised to act on feedback from all of its seven riders to improve strategy recommendations ahead of races.
“From now on we have to share more our tyre strategy and allocation strategy with the teams. For example, Colin Edwards requested some fronts for the Laguna race which he had already used this year at less demanding tracks. He could have used those tyres here, so he was right… obviously we aren´t happy with our riders’ lap times at Laguna, because we didn’t give them enough grip.
“We will also evolve the way we recommend tyre solutions to our teams, because this way we can deliver better performance. The season is far from over and we look forward to the last seven races after some very positive races already this year.”
