This year, the manufacturers have decided to come together to carry out a 2-day semi-private test before the Grand Prix in Misano, thus putting an end to our almost traditional paparazzi sessions post-Grand Prix which allowed us, among other things, tohear the big bang Honda engine in 2016 well before everyone else...
Obviously, the teams did not carry out this pre-Grand Prix test to prevent us from spying nicely, but because the surface of the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli has evolved since last year, without this having been postponed in the press.
A real ice rink in the rain (we remember the record of 140 falls in 2017), the Italian asphalt which has undergone two repairs in 2006 and 2015 by the company Pesaresi Giuseppe SpA, has in fact suffered this year a treatment aimed at improving its grip in the wet.
The track was therefore sanded to increase its roughness, which made it possible to achieve the desired objective in the wet... but reduced its grip in the dry!
After the MotoGP tests which have just taken place there, the various technicians estimate the loss in time between 1/2 second and one second compared to last year.
However, an apparent paradox, fabio quartararo came close to the absolute track record during the last day of testing thanks to a time of 1'31.639 to compare with the 1'31.629 established by Jorge Lorenzo in 2018 riding the Ducati.
Does this mean that the French pilot had a hidden ace up his sleeve?
Yes, but like all his little friends!
Michelin, obviously aware of the work carried out on the Italian track, had brought a secret weapon, in this case a rear tire extra soft experimental equipped with the softest rubber available in the French manufacturer's catalog, therefore only lasting a few laps.
Some have compared this to a qualifying tire, and we can understand them, but Michelin wanted to make things clear: no qualifying tire is planned for the years to come, and the purpose of this envelope was simply to calibrate accurately the new level of grip of the Italian track.
Concretely, this extra-soft nevertheless made it possible to gain at least 4 tenths of a second per lap on the Yamaha (and much more on certain motorcycles) and was used by the vast majority of pilots, Fabio Quartararo including his fastest lap.
During the first day, the temperatures were not very high and would have lent themselves to good times if the track had not been washed by the rain the day before and had had more rubber deposited: in short, it was not not adherent. The next day, things logically gradually improved but the coating, around 10° warmer, limited the increase in performance.
However, thanks to the extra soft rear, Jack Miller, Francesco Bagnaia and Tito Rabat were able to progress from the morning, before most of the first 10 in the final ranking did the same in the afternoon, like Danilo Petrucci, Franco Morbidelli, Valentino Rossi, Maverick Vinales, Takaaki Nakagami, etc.
Among the leaders, only Marc Márquez and probably Andrea Dovizioso did not use this extra soft.
Does this diminish the quality of Fabio Quartararo's performance? Absolutely not, since the French driver, without this “magical” extra soft, was still faster than his opponents in extra soft !
Enough to reassure fans of El Diablo who demonstrated during these two days to be both faster than his direct competitors but also that Marc Márquez and Andrea Dovizioso who obviously worked mainly for the race and/or 2020…
Strongly the next week !
