Michelin manager Piero Taramasso did not take kindly to Alex Rins saying: “I thought my tire would explode”.
“When I saw I the comment I spoke to Suzuki, because in the best case scenario, Alex needs to learn how to express himself…”, stated the Italian technician.
“It’s true that almost all the rider experienced fairly marked sliding of the tires, but that had to do with the track conditions, not the tyres. And when the race was over there were no problem, if not a tire performance that fell below expectations, but for other reasons”.
Taramasso’s explanation is obvious.
“On Friday morning the track conditions were dreadful, everyone was working to make a time attack, because they knew it would rain and so no one was so worried about set-up. Then on Saturday, there was good tire performance in the wet, but on Sunday morning in warm-up conditions were worse than Friday. And then it rained just before the race. The asphalt was in a bad state at that point, worse than it had been on Friday morning, so the tires suffered in getting to temperature, there was spinning, and the asphalt is also eleven years old. The riders did what they could.”
The numbers explain the difficulties: the total time taken for the 20 lap race was around 15 or 20 seconds slower than the previous one.
“No surprise of course. Track conditions were what they were. It was impossible to do more. The situation is clear to us: in those technical conditions, little work on the bikes, only Honda and Ducati were able to do a decent job. But there were no tire problems. It was simply an asphalt problem combined with the little time that teams had to sort set-ups”.
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