Tyre pressure is an essential aspect to consider in MotoGP nowadays. There are mandatory minimum values to be followed during a large part of each race, under penalty of reprimands.
Frankie Carchedi, crew chief at Gresini, told the site Crash.net that the rear tyre does not pose significant difficulties: ‘The rear has never been an issue for me at all. That’s relatively simple, pretty much what you use in the practice sessions is what you use in the race, and then you have a tolerance that you go over’.
Infractions have been related to the front tyres, and the team’s engineer mentioned: ‘I think that 99% of the problems were always on the front. Arguably sometimes when you start at the back is a little bit easier, because you know you are going to have ten riders, or 12 riders in front, and it can give you an advantage if you then get a bit of clean air in-between passing riders’.
Gresini received a penalty with Marc Márquez at the Dutch GP, and Carchedi explained that the circumstances were very peculiar: ‘We got caught out once, and we do have a big tolerance – also because the bike we’re using allows us a little bit. And we got caught out in Assen, it became rainy, very overcast, very cold, we had to change a component on the bike which had a big influence – the set-up of the bike can have a massive influence on the temperature use, and we changed something from Saturday to Sunday’.