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.
“After this process we decided to reduce the pressure value from 1.88 to 1.80 bar.
“This will give a little more leeway to the engineers and riders, who will be able to stay between 1.8 and 2.1, having a good range to get the front pressures under control.
“In return, however, we have asked to stick to it for 60 percent of the Sunday race distance and not 50 percent like last year, because we take a little more risk.
“This news was well received by the organisers, teams and drivers. It will be like this starting with the Qatar test and it will be like this throughout the season.”
Taramasso also noted that its 2024 tyre range was tested successfully earlier this month in Malaysia, while a new ‘hard plus’ front tyre could be introduced from the Spanish GP if further analysis in Qatar this week goes well.
