lap, even," according to Jack
Miller, the situation can become
a nightmare to manage.
"The front tire is the holy grail
of the motorcycle world," said
Trevathan. "If a rider doesn't
have that feedback from the
front, he doesn't know where to
bit earlier. Then if the pressure
goes very high, you start to
close the front in the middle of
the corner, in the fast corners
especially. It's then difficult to
have the feeling to try to over-
take the rider in front of you be-
cause you start to think that you
disrupts the air behind, creating
a wake, which unsettles the
bike (this caused Rins' crash in
France and Takaaki Nakagami's
in Barcelona). Second, the aero
package alters the bike's natu-
ral streamlined outline, greatly
impacting top speed.
FEATURE I MOTOGP TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS
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push or how hard he can push."
So, when the tire overheats, the
pressure can get out of control.
"If the pressure rises more, it
starts doing more front locking
in braking, so it's difficult to stop
the bike," said the erudite Luca
Marini. "You have to brake a little
can crash if you exaggerate."
In the past, an overheating
front tire could be cured by sim-
ply pulling out of the slipstream,
giving the rubber fresh air to cool
it. But that is currently problem-
atic for two reasons: First, a Mo-
toGP machine's aero package
As Trevathan explained, "In
2020 you'd just tell the rider to
pull out of the slipstream to cool
the tire down. You'd do that on
a few straights, and it was fine.
But now if you do that, you get
the wake and the whole bike
starts shaking. And you lose so
Time was when you could get in a draft, pull out and pass cleanly. Now
you have to stay in the draft for the longest possible time until the rider in front
gets on the brakes, then jump out of the draft to make the pass.
