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MOTOGP: Why Dorna is Threatening to Impose a Spec Tire
Written by: Dennis Noyes   
10/03/2007
Magny-Cours, France
 
(Photo: Suzuki Racing) ยป More Photos

When Carmelo Ezpeleta announced in Motegi, Japan, on the Saturday of the Japanese Grand Prix just two weeks ago that Dorna had made an official proposal to the Grand Prix Commission to introduce a single tire manufacturer to supply the MotoGP class in 2008, there were literally shouts of outrage in the media center and almost universal public condemnation from team directors.

The journalists' reaction was predictable given the ivory tower mentality that most GP scribes maintain ('this is a prototype championship and there must be freedom for manufacturers of motorcycles, tires, suspensions, etc.'). But the team managers were, in many cases -- and especially in the case of most Michelin teams -- being less than sincere and trying not to say anything that would annoy their current tire source. Speaking off the record many of them believe this would be a good thing.

Writing from the World Superbike paddock in Magny-Cours on the Thursday leading up the final SBK round on Sunday, it is easy to recall very similar reactions in the Laguna Seca paddock in 2003 when Maurizio and Paolo Flammini announced that World Superbike would switch to a single tire supplier for 2004. Insiders quickly revealed that the tire brand would be Pirelli as Michelin and Dunlop spokespersons expressed shock and outrage.

Many SBK journalists went on record by writing articles calling this a huge error. A black history indeed was predicted for the series. To understand why Dorna feels driven to follow the lead of SBK and F1, we need to look back at the World Superbike situation in 2003.

As time has shown, the Flammini brothers did exactly the right thing. Their situation in 2003 was dire. In addition to a smoldering dispute with the MSMA (manufacturers' association) over the rejection by FGSport of the MSMA proposal to apply restrictor plates to all SBK machines to cap performance and to seek parity between the twins, triples, and fours, SBK was facing a situation where Michelin was supplying top-of-the-line tires to only one team, the all-conquering Ducati Corse squad, and refusing to take on other teams. (They supplied the uncompetitive Petronas team with tires, but not the "right stuff" that was exclusively for the Ducati riders, Neil Hodgson and Ruben Xaus.)

Dunlop was supplying the rest of the paddock, with the exception of the DFXtreme Ducati team (Steve Martin, Juan Bautista Borja and Marco Borciani) who were running development Pirelli tires, but Dunlop's best stuff went to only a couple of teams. The rest got 'product,' and there was even controversy among the few select Dunlop teams with Regis Laconi (Caracchi Ducati) claiming that Dunlop had favored James Toseland (GSE Ducati) in the battle of the Frenchman and the Englishman for third place.

SBK Did the Right Thing For the Right Reason

There is absolutely no question that, given the circumstances in 2003, FGSport did the right
thing. Michelin executives angrily denounced FGSport as a company director said, "no true world championship would impose such a rule."

Those words sound hollow now that Formula 1 has gone exclusively to Bridgestone, and especially now that Dorna has made the control tire proposal.

Dunlop, however, had a different complaint. The British/Japanese giant has supported all forms of professional motorcycle racing and was, in fact, the major supplier for World Superbike in 2003. Dunlop complained that there had been no open bidding but their complaint to the European Community in late 2003 did not prosper.

The system works; it produces good racing, relatively fast lap times (though certainly not as fast as prototype tires would produce), and has now become such a natural way of life in the World Superbike paddock that no one even questions it, not even the journalists who claimed the sky was falling in 2003.

The reasons for Dorna to propose the same system are very similar. After years of Michelin domination, Bridgestone, the world's largest tire company, stepped up their game hugely in 2007. But there was another factor that upset Michelin's dominance: Due to a rule introduced at the start of this season, team are limited to 31 tires for the weekend and all 31 must be chosen on Thursday and locked away under FIM lock and key.

This means that Michelin cannot, as they were able to do in the past, mix up a special brew of Saturday night specials to be shipped by fast van overnight to European venues to bail out teams and riders who needed something special for the race.

The Michelin "Geographical Advantage"

This 'geographical advantage' was exclusive to Michelin and Dunlop (who rarely, if ever, did it), while Bridgestone's production facilities in Japan were too far away to allow overnight reaction.

The big step forward by Bridgestone, Michelin's loss of the geographical advantage and the new tire rules were not the only curveballs thrown to the tire manufacturers this year. There was also the switch from 990cc machines to lighter 800cc bikes that make their speed via higher corner speeds and require much more extreme edge grip.

Of course it was a huge mistake by Dorna to insist that the tire companies come up with these new rules in the same year that a whole new generation of machines were making their debut. The old adage in setting up a motorcycle is not to change more than one thing at a time.

While 'purist' race fans accepted the Bridgestone domination (with occasional Michelin dominated races), Dorna was faced with some big problems -- problems that were at least in part their own making.

First of all, the close racing that has been the rule rather than the exception in MotoGP was replaced by runaway victories in most cases. And -- from Dorna's TV perspective -- the wrong guy was winning.
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