EXUP Worldwide

I just heard during the race today that Bridgestone is going to be the only tire supplier for the 800's next year, a qty of only 20 tires per rider, and NO QUALIFING tires.

Can anyone confirm this?

Yep, Bridgestone will be the sole tyre supplier for Moto GP in 2009, and will more than likley provide a small choice of tyre variations (hard/med/soft) for any given track, given there current track knowledge

No qualifying tyres means that they will probly finish as they qualify.....
the cream will rise to the top, as it does in F1 and WSBK who also run a control tyre, so expect to see the usual suspects week in week out

Read an article recently regarding Moto GP tyres, where Michelin change the tyre construction, but not so much the rubber compounds, but Bridgestone settled on a tyre construction but change the compound polymers. Bridgstone own a small polymer plant, so can order a small batch of rubber (say 500Kg) where michelin use a commercial supplier who would only make a batch of 5 tonn.

So i wonder who Bridgestone will produce a generic tyre for??? Rossi is the biggest name in the buisness, so if you find yourself on a Yamaha next year, you might find that the tyres suit your bike a little better than any of the others

Stan

I'm in two minds over the control tyre.
I like the idea because it will provide a level playing field for all and should hopefully mean no more situations like at laguna where the michelin guys were fighting to stay with their bikes, never mind for a position.
I dont like the idea because it takes away the competition.
Bridgestone have already said that they wont be making tyres suitable for specific rider needs. They'll just bring a selection of tyres and these will be available to all riders. This will mean that some riders will no doubt have to change their style to suite the tyre. I'm not sure I like the sound of that. I prefer to see individuals doing their own thing.
No qualifying tyres may be a good thing. How often have we seen a rider do a blistering lap in the last minutes of qualifying only to have it ruined by another rider on his way back to the pits on wrecked qualifyers?
We may see slightly slower qualifying times, but hopefull the grid will be closer.

As always I look forward to the season starting!

I'm all for individuals being individuals and so it should always be, however, even the mere notion that other guys get tires that allow them to be more or less competetive is bogus.

I like the fact that the one manufacturer completely levels the playing field and no one has any special advantages through a tire.

Only, I've always been a michelin fan though, so kinda sucks for michelin or bridgestone who will undoubtedly be the odd man out some other year.

Aside from the racing, I think this will suck for street tyres in
five to eight years, because it will definitely lessen the war of
building better tyres for motogp now. We've had
a huge advance in tyres and bikes in the last decade, and much
of that is hand-me-down technology from MotoGP.
Lets face it, what will be Bridgestone's motivation for building
a better motogp tyre now?

lack of compitition is excatly why Michelin said they wouldn't compete for the Moto GP tender, and why they withdrew from F1

I don't think the 1 make has helped F1, but WSBk racing is red hot every round

guess we will have to wait and see
stan

sickle44 wrote:I'm all for individuals being individuals and so it should always be, however, even the mere notion that other guys get tires that allow them to be more or less competetive is bogus....

Better Tyres for the fast guys has been going on for years.
I'm not sure of the exact years (it was late 80's, early 90's) but michelin were supplying the top 5 contracted riders + whoever was fastest in qualifying with "A" grade tyres while everyone else got "B" grade.
From what I recall there was about a second a lap difference between the 2 grade. Niall Mackenzie commented that when he got an "A" grade tyre it made him slower as it didn't work with his bike as it had been set up for the inferior rubber. Where was the sense in that rule I wonder?
Surely the races would have been more interesting if the slower guys had better tyres?