Bridgestones

Watching FP2 as the Moody/Ryder/Mamola team try and figure out what's
going to happen. It looks like its going to be very restrictive on tyre
numbers. One suggestion is 150 tyres per manufacturer for non-race
testing per year. Which makes me wonder. Who's providing the machines
and with what riders for *Bridgestone's* testing. If it's Ducati does
that give them an advantage?

One tyre manufacturer seems to work fine in 125 and 250. (And in WSB).
Why should it be any harder in MotoGP?

 

Here's what Ryder says at Soup today: "Expect around 20 tyres for a
weekend with a
choice of two constructions and two compounds for the front and only a
little more choice for the rear. Qualifiers
are obviously dead, there is a discussion going on about how many rain
tyres will be provided, and expect only 150
tyres to be provided for testing - that's all season. You can also
expect an unholy row when it comes home to the
riders exactly what the reality of a one-tyre rule means."

The support classes are competitive tire situations, even if Dunlop
actually supplies all of them. That means Dunlop can't just cut
everyone off to save money, what they do there is what they determine
in a cost-benefit analysis. Same goes for AMA SB. Pirelli did their
deal with WSB in order to get meaningful exposure on the world stage,
something they basically couldn't accomplish in a competitive
situation.

In MotoGP, it's pretty obvious that neither tire company wanted a
monopoly situation, rather it has been Dorna that has been driving
that boat. And when you have Ezpeleta making material, detailed
decisions on this sort of thing, with his lack of technical knowledge,
some of those decisions are inevitably going to be bad ones. So
Bridgestone doesn't want to spend a ton of money on supplying everyone
with tires, something no one else is interested in doing at all, and
they then draw the line on those costs. One would think teams would be
allowed to buy additional tires for testing at minimum, but it may be
that Dorna is using tires as a governor on testing.

What we'll likely see out of the box is a lot of complaining by some
riders, guys whose riding style or machines just don't fit what gets
built. And as is always the case, there will be some shift by
Bridestone toward what works for Rossi and Pedrosa, if only because
Dorna demands it...