As the curve of the winner of this German Grand Prix, Marc Márquez, is relatively clear, let's focus today on the different choices made by the Yamaha riders in an attempt to compensate for their relatively poor qualification.
Jonas Folger, the best qualifier from Iwata in fifth place made the same choice as the Yamaha factory riders, namely front medium and rear medium.
This choice, approved by the vast majority of drivers, allowed Jonas Folger to have a splendid race, even going so far as to take the lead to finish behind Marc Márquez following a few small driving errors.
Similarly, Maverick Vinales and Valentino Rossi were able to have a very solid race, the first finishing in 4th position after starting 11th, the second 5th after starting from 9th place on the grid. Overmotivated at home, Jonas Folger was nevertheless clearly above the rest...
Johann zarco, qualified 19th, made a choice that only two KTM riders (Mika Kallio and Bradley Smith) also adopted: (front medium and rear hard.
In theory, this could have allowed him to complete a second part of the race faster than that of his opponents who started on medium. In practice, we see that the French rider proved to be the slowest of the Yamaha riders during the last third of the race.
Is it due to his choice of tires? Probably not. During the first two thirds of the race, the holder of the Tech3 team went up and overtook nine other drivers, on a circuit where this is particularly difficult. His tires obviously suffered during the operation, especially since, during his debriefing, he mentioned a rather contradictory phenomenon: « It's true that it's still complicated, because we can imagine that we'll be able to double there, there and there. But as soon as you are behind the person, you think “come on, I’m getting ahead and you just have to speed up more”. Well instead of moving forward, we're skating. Almost to overtake, you have to accelerate less to slip less! »
Constantly finding grip, that is to say the right balance between opening the throttle on one side, and accelerating and preserving the tires on the other, is a necessarily difficult exercise.
Johann zarco got out of this complicated situation very well, and even if he himself admits not having had the pace of Jonas Folger, his technical manager, Guy Coulon, told us: “Without this problem in qualifying, we were competitive enough to finish in the top 5.”
The choice of the hard rear tire was therefore the one that best suited the number five, « These are the tires I felt the best on, medium front, hard rear,” and therefore the one which allowed him to overtake 10 drivers to reach the finish of this German Grand Prix in ninth position, despite a very small drop in pace during the last third of the race due to the work carried out previously.
