Management of tire pressures and temperatures, new Michelin compounds, carbon frame and angle grip Peter Acosta, so many subjects that we have discussed with Nicolas Goyon, Team Manager of the Red Bull GASGAS Tech3 team who drives the sensational rookie in MotoGP.
Nicolas, we are not going to make you talk about the performances of Pedro Acosta which must bring you a lot of happiness, because almost everything has already been said, but we recently saw an article indicating that Ducati had developed a very simple little program which indicates to drivers the count of valid and invalid laps in relation to the tire pressure regulations.
Without betraying any secrets, we understand that you have had lights on the dashboard for a while now to indicate front and rear pressure. Where are you today in this area?
Nicolas Goyon : “So on motorcycle dashboards, anyway, we can now really display whatever we want. So we can really choose to actually display a whole bunch of information on the machine. Afterwards, what is wise is to really display what is important to the driver. So we, as you must already know, we have lights to indicate tire temperatures, front and rear, and it is mainly to indicate if we are too low in temperature. And under pressure, it's the same, we have several alarm thresholds that we display. If we start to be too high in pressure, we show that to them so that the pilots know it and can possibly move away from the slipstream (wake) of another pilot. »
Are these indicator lights, not numerical indications?
“Yes, they are clairvoyants because we decided so. We could have put numerical indications, but we preferred to light up lights, small squares in the dashboard, and depending on the colors the drivers know exactly if, for example, they need to be careful because the tire is too cold. and that he must be put on a diet. These are really indications for them, that is to say that if the feeling from the front starts to be a little difficult and he has the LED on, well he knows that he is under excess pressure from the front and that it is better to offset a little from the slipstream of the guy in front.”
Or on the contrary brake a little harder if they want to increase the pressure?
"No no. So in relation to the tire rules, for the moment we have not reacted to that becausewe believe that it is the technicians' job to be within the rules. The driver does not have to worry about whether he has to brake 2 or 3 times to try to build up pressure. So for the moment, we are not there, that is our job. The pilot, we only give him the information that is useful to him, that can help him. Helping him means avoiding falling if the tires are too cold or helping him by avoiding falling if the front pressure, for example, is too high. The rest, we try to manage it ourselves.”
So precisely, with the regulations, Michelin lowered its minimum pressure a little and introduced new compounds. Does this change anything perceptibly for you compared to last year, or not?
“So yes, Michelin adjusted its pressures, however they demanded 60% instead of 50% of the revolutions above. So for us, practically, it doesn't change much, 50% or 60%, it doesn't change much. On the other hand, the fact that they lowered the minimum pressure changes a lot, because roughly speaking, we work with the same standards as before and the same limits as before, except that suddenly we gained a little margin. Before we didn't have any margin at all and it was very easy, without necessarily wanting to cheat but before it was very easy to get penalized because you weren't good. Whereas by having lowered that a little bit, we continue to work the same and we have gained a little margin of safety. And whatever it is, anyway, 50% or 60%, it’s roughly the same for us, it doesn’t change much.”
So a more approach…
“Not more permissive, but less restrictive, in the sense that we are still within the norm, we are still respecting pressures and protocols, except that it respects the philosophy of the standard more, rather than punishing guys for nothing because they took the lead in the race and were not in the rear of a motorcycle, and that their pressure was not as expected. That’s more the spirit of this rule.”
To be continued tomorrow…
