Due to safety fears about teams running underneath recommended tyre pressures, MotoGP began to enforce new minimum front and rear limits from last year’s British Grand Prix.
For much of the year building up to the British GP, riders voiced their concerns about the new front minimum of 1.88 bar of pressure.
They felt this offered too narrow a working window before the tyre ballooned to an unsafe level in terms of grip, while setting up the pressure for each race to avoid penalisation also proved to be difficult.
Last year, the rule stipulated that riders could not go under the minimum pressures for more than 30% of a sprint and 50% of a grand prix, and anyone found to have done so would be penalised on a sliding scale basis.
Warnings were issued to 20 riders, while four were hit with three-second penalties for repeat offences – Fabio Di Giannantonio being the most notable of those, as it cost him a podium in Valencia.
For 2024, any rider found to have breached the pressure rule will be disqualified from the results.
This should hopefully now become less likely as Michelin has confirmed it has reduced the minimum front pressure to 1.8 bar.
“This winter we reanalysed all the data from last year and redid all the severity tests with circuit-by-circuit simulations,” Michelin motorsport boss Piero Taramasso said.
Source: Autosport