Until Ernest Riveras, commentator and voice of the MotoGP World Championship, had his doubts. The champion Dani Pedrosa He didn’t want to get too wet and said, of course, that “these things happen”. He Italian champion ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia He said that his bad result on Saturday (5th), in the sprint race, was also due to a defective rear tire. He even more champion Marc Márquez He said that the tires are up to the standard of the championship but that, sometimes, “you get a bad one and you can only regret it, nothing more.”
Jorge Martín, the driver affected yesterday by a bad rear wheel Michelin which, without a doubt, has left him without a world title (the miracle is impossible in Cheste), he assures that “it is a shame that, in the penultimate event of the season, a candidate for the title is faced with a tire with zero grip. ”. And Michelin, through the mouth of the person most responsible for it, Piero Taramasso, says that Martín’s tire had a normal manufacturing process and that it was not manipulated before. “The tires have been so good in this race that the fastest lap was done Enea Bastianini in the last turn!”
pure draw
The tire packages are drawn every Thursday of the race and, lo and behold, Martín apparently received a lot that had two defective rear wheels. One ruined his second training session on Friday and the other, yesterday’s race, the long one, which made him (almost) lose the world title he was chasing. Bagnaia also had a bad wheel on Saturday, in the ‘sprint’ race, with the difference that he lost ‘only’ 7 points with respect to ‘Martinator’, while the Madrid driver lost 14 yesterday in the long race.´
Overall, Bagnaia will start the race at the ‘sprint’ on Saturday with the possibility of renewing his title, already that day, if he finishes the race with 4 points more than Martín. “I know what awaits me in Valencia, I have already experienced it. I know that I will have to be very focused from minute one on Friday. I hope he can renew the title on Saturday and then I won’t race on Sunday,” said the Ducati champion, very happy, despite having lost to his compatriot ‘Diga’, four laps from the end. “But I would like to remind everyone that Jorge (Martín) on Saturday is nothing short of invincible.”
“That the rubber starts to skid at the start means that it has no grip, and That happens when the tire has 30 turns. It has been a shame having to drive So; I felt very frustrated and at the end I was even laughing. It wasn’t my fault and I proved it on Saturday when I won the sprint test. Today (yesterday) I was a second and a half slower because of a tire that didn’t work. Well that; a shame,” summarized Martín, who in no way felt defeated.
Valencia will decide
“The situation frustrates me a lot, but I would have been more frustrated if they had beaten me on the track.. And this time it wasn’t like that. Once again they have beaten me out of it. I don’t really know what to say. I think the level of the tires has to go up a lot. It cannot be that the MotoGP World Championship is decided by a tire that does not work. And what a coincidence that it only happened to one of the two contenders for the title. The rest of the drivers did quite well,” suggested the number 89, who urged Michelin to investigate the reason for this lack of regularity in the performance of its compounds.
“Not even they understand why it happens, but it happens. I’m not saying it’s on purpose, and I hope it wasn’t on purpose. I would like this situation to improve so that it doesn’t happen to anyone,” argued the candidate, who does not plan to throw in the towel early, but is aware of how difficult it is for that coveted title. “I’m going to try until the end, but I would not arrive in Valencia in this situation if it were not for this rubber,” Martín added.