Following Marc Márquez's surprising statement that the soft rear tire used at Assen was in some ways harder than the hard (See here), as promised we contacted Michelin to ask for some clarifications…
The embarrassment of Piero Taramasso on the subject there is no doubt: “I cannot comment on Marc's statement, because I do not understand it. We will speak to him at the Sachsenring to try to understand what he meant. Perhaps he wanted to talk about certain characteristics of the rubber compounds on certain sides of the tire, but if that is the case, this is an area on which Michelin does not wish to comment.
Obviously, Marc Márquez said a little too much, but we will never know precisely the depth of his thoughts…
We also asked the Michelin MotoGP manager about the disaffection with the medium rear tire in racing, a tire which last year was classified as “hard”.
Piero Taramasso : “At Assen, drivers chose the Soft rear tires or the Hard rear tire, but no one took the Medium. From the first days, we saw that this was the trend. The reason is that the Medium was not more consistent than the Soft: it degraded in the same way and therefore did not offer any advantage compared to the Soft which still had more Grip. It offered a little less movement and was a little more stable, but that's it. And compared to Hard, it was not more efficient and did not have more potential. It therefore presented almost no advantage, neither compared to soft, nor compared to hard, and that is why no one chose it for the race. It was still used to make adjustments, since the drivers only have six soft rear tires at their disposal for the weekend. It was a good supplementary tire to work on the bike's settings, but not useful in qualifying and the race.
