When approaching a Grand Prix weekend, there are many elements that are useful to have in mind, including old records, races from the previous year or the physical characteristics of the circuit.
To find out a little more about this last point, and go a little further than the number of turns or the length of the straight line, we wanted to interview professionals in order to try to find out the important elements that an experience of several decades allows them to bear directly in mind when arriving at a circuit.
Guy Coulon, the wizard of the Monster Yamaha Tech3 team, who was kind enough to answer our questions for the first circuits of the season, addresses here the Catalunya circuit, located near Barcelona….
Guy Coulon: “The main characteristic of Montmelo is that, whether it is hot or cold, there is relatively little grip. Even less when it's hot.
After the start, and the first chicane, there is turn #3, the big uphill right is important because you need to be able to get grip on the ground, at the rear. How? I'm not going to tell you (laughs).
When there is not too much grip, there are two kinds of problems; you can have some slippage, but still be able to move your motorcycle forward. That's the lesser evil in Barcelona. But you can also have skating, and stay put. And that’s a lot less good (laughs).
Now this famous turn #3 lasts a very long time, so if you have a problem there, you really lose a lot of time. So, you have to be able to move your motorcycle there; even if you're skating, she has to move forward!
Turn #4 doesn't pose too much of a problem, but at #5, on the one hand it's been a while since you've turned left, and on the other hand it still goes down quite violently and the turn is quite dry. A small mistake quickly becomes significant because you don't have much time to recover and you don't have any room for maneuver. That's why there are a lot of falls.
The ascent does not pose too many problems. Turn #9 is blind but technically, it doesn't pose a problem for us.
Then comes the stadium, and there again, it's always the same problem; the grip. There, we climb violently, before the last two turns, and in addition with a change of direction where you go out quite wide to the right and you have to come back to the left to position yourself. In fact, the straight line between 10 and 11 does not exist because you are always inclined in a change of direction that you must do flexibly so as not to rush your bike and not make it lose grip. All this must be very rounded, very constructed, and very controlled, otherwise, if you start to get in the way a little at the exit of the left (#10) which enters the stadium, you have not taken your position well. trajectory, you lose speed, and you start to spin, then you are dead to the finish line.
Afterwards, there remain the two famous breaks (12 and 13) before the finish, where something can always happen. But very often, overtaking in the last corner is initiated by the speed that you were able to take and maintain in the stadium part. This is the problem with all circuits with fairly low grip; if you make a small control error, it's not because you're going to open a little more that you're going to catch up; on the contrary, you will skate more. So you really have to be very fluid and very precise. “
