MotoGP: Friday falls “unfortunate”, Pedrosa sets German GP record

After MotoGP’s German GrandPrix Friday morning practice session, it looked like Bridgestone may have some explaining to do, with some of the sport’s fastest riders experiencing falls after losing grip. Assistant to director, Motorsport Tyre Development Division, Hirohide Hamashima told the press that unusually cold conditions during the session, coupled with the course’s modest quota of three right-hand corners, had combined to leave riders with little heat in the right side of their front tyres. The tyre supplier brought hard and extra hard front and medium and hard asymmetric rear slicks for the weekend, which Dani Pedrosa used to set new lap and total race time records on the Sunday in his second race since returning from injury. Pedrosa, Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner spent the race locked in a three-way battle for the lead, ahead of a three-way battle for fourth and a four-way battle for seventh, keeping the 101,309 race-day fans thoroughly entertained.

In a statement, Hamashima discussed the problems of Friday practice: “There were several crashes in which Valentino, Casey, Dani and Toni all fell. In each instance it was through a right hand corner, and of course with only three rights in a lap it is the right side of the tyres that is lesser used and therefore tends to be cooler. Every crash happened as a result of the rider losing the front end. Turn eleven, where most of the falls occurred, is the first fast right of the lap and is over a blind crest before riders plunge downhill towards turn twelve.

“This means a few things: because it is the first fast right of the lap, the right side of the tyres hadn’t been subject to much residual load by that point so the temperature tends to be lower. It is a fast corner so the riders must commit to it and carry a lot of speed through it, which places sudden load on the front tyre. And finally, because it is over a blind crest, there is a natural tendency for the bike to go light which means as the circuit drops away the load exerted through the tyres is momentarily reduced, reducing contact patch and therefore grip. Plus, the track temperature was cold, and the combination of this contributed to the crashes we saw on Friday morning.
 
“It is important to point out though that we must select our tyre compound options for the conditions we expect in the race which are often if not always much better. Indeed, in the race our compound options were very well suited and performed very well. After Friday morning there were no repeat instances of the same situation so it is fair to say that the conditions on Friday morning were unique and unfortunate as we never like to see riders crash and make great efforts when developing and testing our tyres to make rider safety paramount.”

Softer rear slicks

Hamashima continued, discussing the performance of the softer rear slicks available at this year’s German Grand Prix: “I am very happy with tyre performance in the race because we were able to see that riders could use both specs of front and rear tyres very well and the times and consistency were very good. Dani set a new lap record on the harder front and rear options, first on lap 9 indicating the performance was good from an early stage, and then finally on lap 20 indicating that the performance lasted well over race distance. The consistency from the top three in particular was also very impressive as they set mid-to-low 1m 22s lap after lap from the first flying lap until the chequered flag. This resulted in the top three all recording race times faster than the previous total race time record which is a very good sign of tyre consistency and durability, as well as of course the consistency and talent of the riders.
 
“Then we could also see that Alvaro used the softer front and rear slicks for the race and was also very consistent and gave a good performance. Racing very closely with Valentino, Nicky and Colin until the finish, all of whom used the harder options, Alvaro had no problems with tyre wear or graining even on a circuit as severe as Sachsenring.
 
“We have selected softer slicks for many of the remaining races this year and based on the performance of this weekend’s revised rear tyre selection, combined with the changes to tyre allocation that we have proposed from Brno onwards, I am satisfied that we are moving in a good direction for warm-up performance and rider feeling.”

Bridgestone will also provide softer rear slicks for US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, having cited cooler early morning temperatures as the main reason for the change. It seems likely that the difficulties experienced in Germany represented a watershed in the process of making this decision.

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• Hamashima clarifies MotoGP tyre issues at Dutch TT