About Gianluca Montiron / Motoracing
Our columnist Gianluca Montiron offers a comparison between Superbike and MotoGP performances at Phillip Island. Tires: pressure sensors required!
Great opening for Superbike on Australian soil, a performance in capitals for Marco Melandri who appeared determined, fast and precise in the management of races 1 and 2. With 130 races to his credit in SBK, he won 22 victories, surpassing Max Biaggi, with a bizarre and clear talent which allowed this good guy from Ravenna to reach the podium 64 times in SBK.
MARCO & MARC – Melandri having managed races 1 and 2 with mastery, I wanted to make a plausible comparison between MotoGP and Superbike, comparing the winner of Phillip Island in MotoGP 2017, Marc Marquez, and race 1 of the Superbike 2018. Comparable climatic conditions for air and asphalt temperatures, humidity, and dry track for both categories: air temperature 16°, asphalt 29°, humidity 79% for MotoGP versus air at 20°, asphalt 31° and humidity 79% for race 1 of the SBK.
In the first lap of Race 1, Melandri (1.37.223) was even 0.193 faster than Marc Marquez (1.37.416), an important first signal! Pirelli tires heat up immediately and perform well, and we are talking about a commercial product.
PRESSURE – This sparks controversy as it appears teams are using tire pressures below the minimum limit of 1,6 bar. Pressure sensors have already been used for years in Moto2 to ensure that safety parameters are respected, but also to interpret the data and understand how the setting works. Despite those who say that the tires deteriorate during the race, it is immediately clear that the winner of race 1, Marco Melandri, like the MotoGP riders, was a real metronome, lapping with gaps of a few tenths from the first to the last lap. Another sign of the good work of the Aruba.it Ducati team which has found a good balance of the bike to give confidence to the rider, and a compromise for the use of tires which, sometimes, subordinate the geometry (link, suspensions) for cost-effective management during the race.
PROGRESS – Twelve seconds of progress on the distance of race 1 compared to last year (22 laps), indicates that Pirelli sought performance with the increased section of the W1049 (200/55) which obviously allows better support and to hang on in the three left curves of Phillip Island. So much so that Melandri (1′.31.182) in his fastest lap in the race, only conceded a second (1) to Marc Marquez (181) who, with his MotoGP, represents the technological expression maximum of our time. Important point for a Superbike: the Ducati Panigale R reached a top speed of 1.30.001 km/h compared to 310 km/h for the Honda MotoGP. With 334 kg more (SBK 10 vs MotoGP 168), the difference is felt at these levels!
DEVELOPMENT – I don't want to compare the drivers, I want to emphasize the importance of the tires and the work done by Pirelli, because probably the engineer Giorgio Barbier and his group wanted to strive for performance. Due to the bad choices made by some teams and the difficult track characteristics like at Phillip Island, we saw race 2 with a pit stop that brought a spectacle as well as the confirmation of the same protagonist in the photo finish against Rea. The reigning world champion continues to use the V0965 solution used last season.
SAFETY – In MotoGP, flag to flag has already happened at Phillip Island, when the supplier was Bridgestone. Safety first, but the real argument is that the pressure sensors are necessary, to prevent some random games from teams that lower the values to have more grip. Ultimately, with the new Superbike regulations that should have tightened up performance, the times aren't that far off from MotoGP's million-dollar prototypes, a fact that indicates how tires have always determined performance. My compliments to Pirelli, it will be interesting to understand how their F1 technology is transferred to a motorcycle product application. But for this reason…. stay in line !
