Not much been mentioned about Frankie’s start to the season. Sat in 4th by almost 30 points over 5th (his team mate). Not many saw that coming.
So Mav gets a 16 second penalty for low tyre pressure. I thought the bikes had an on-board read out or is that only a Ducati thing ? Andy
Its ridiculous that we dont know for sure what position people have finished with this rule. Obviously tyre heat and pressure can change in the race. Silly rule, needs dumping.
Okay, I’ve just found an answer to my own question and it is, actual tyre pressure data is only monitored by race control, it is not available to the teams. Some but not all teams, monitor live data from wheel temperature sensors which gives them a pretty good idea of pressure which gets communicated to the riders. Clearly not KTM. Andy
He should have a brother on the grid so he can sit on his rear and warm it up a bit. Perfectly simple
I’ll try and find the YouTube video I watched, running a low pressure in the front tyre can give a small performance advantage, downside is, too low creates excessive heat and the tyre can delaminate. Michelin raised the safety concerns and subsequently we have the tyre pressure rule. Teams collect and analyse wheel temperature data over Friday and Saturday warm up and ‘wet finger’ a pressure for the race. Some teams sail close to the wind and when you get an unexpected race, Mav being out front for a lot of laps, KTM got it wrong. BSB has a minimum tyre pressure of 1.65 bar, at all times, not just a small number of laps during the race. You could also take tyres out of the equation like the Dunlops did in Moto 3 and Moto 2 but that didn’t suit Dorna. Andy
I knew roughly how it worked, but that is a good explanation. It seems that maybe there could be a better way though, such as a minimum ‘checked’ pressure at the start of the race. Seems a bit of a farce atm. Imagine a title going down to the last race of the season with riders level on points and this deciding the outcome..(highly unlikely this year, Marc will probably have it wrapped up with several races spare!)
This is the short video that provided the answer to my question #62, . At 2.40, pretty top level explanation but short enough not to be boring Andy
