MotoGP News: Michelin to Investigate After Bagnaia Points to Tire Issues in Latest Race

Alex Harrington | 6 Hours Ago

Apr 13, 2024; Austin, TX, USA; Francesco Bagnaia (1) of Italy and Ducati Lenovo Team rides during the qualifying session for the MotoGP Grand Prix of the Americas at Circuit of The Americas. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images / Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

Francesco Bagnaia, the reigning MotoGP champion, has drawn focus to tire performance issues following a challenging race at the Emilia Romagna MotoGP. The race saw Bagnaia struggling with tire inconsistencies for the second time in just three race weekends, prompting Michelin to announce an investigation into the issue.

Bagnaia, riding for the factory Ducati team, first highlighted these issues during the recent Grand Prix. On Saturday, he dominated the Sprint race using a soft rear tire. However, come race day Sunday, despite opting for a medium rear tire, the same choice as most riders except Marco Bezzecchi, Bagnaia found himself struggling to maintain the lead. His pace was significantly slower, particularly noticeable after title rival Jorge Martin passed him, gaining an advantage of 0.65 to 0.7 seconds per lap.

“The rear tyre started to work after 15 laps, something incredible!” Bagnaia said. During these laps, he not only set a new lap record but also began to close in on Martin and Enea Bastianini. Despite the sudden improvement, his fortunes changed on lap 21, where a front lock-up caused him to crash, even though he braked 18-20 meters earlier than on his best lap.

Reflecting on the incident, he said the following:

“It’s impossible to lose the front [like this] if you are in dry conditions. Everything was quite strange today, but it happened to us twice in the last three Grand Prix, so maybe it will happen to others in the next one.”

Bagnaia's struggles on Sunday echo problems faced earlier at Aragon, where he blamed a ninth-place Sprint finish on poor front tire performance. These recurring issues have pushed Michelin to conduct a thorough analysis to understand the abnormal tire behavior.

Michelin’s MotoGP boss, Piero Taramasso, acknowledged the unusual performance fluctuations experienced by Bagnaia, describing them as ‘quite strange.’

"For the moment, we are waiting to analyse the data to understand what happened. It's quite strange, because he had a very good start, the leader of the race for four laps, so was lapping same as Jorge and Bastia. And then for five or six laps, he was two or three tenths slower, and then lap 12 he was able to recover again.

"His lap time was very fast. Lap 16 he set the best lap time of the race, he was coming back very very strongly, he was attacking to catch up on the two [leaders]. So now we try to understand what happened. When we have the data, for sure we will know.

"But it's not very usual to see a good performance at the beginning, and then a 'hole' [in performance], and then good performance again,” Taramasso explained.

It’s remarkable that Bagnaia was the only rider to set several laps under 1'31'' - a fact that really highlights the peculiarity of the tire performance drop and subsequent recovery. Michelin’s investigation aims to uncover why these anomalies occurred and prevent future hardships for riders.