The rear tire introduced by Michelin this year generated vibrations on the motorcycles. If Ducati quickly found a solution, which has allowed it to clearly dominate the championship since the spring, the problems persist at Aprilia as at KTM.
Within the Austrian manufacturer, drivers described these vibrations from the start of the European season until its conclusion. The problems are still there in overseas races: in Motegi, route favorable to RC16 that Pedro Acosta placed on pole, Jack Miller still faced significant limitations.
“I had trouble with the chatter, vibrations”explained the Australian after the first two practice sessions, describing his difficulties in the corners: “When I was trying to keep speed at the [virage] 3, as soon as I reached the rope, the bike said ‘no more’. This is something that happens all the time these days. I’m trying to find a fucking way around this but I can’t find a solution.”
Miller tried to adapt his driving but he couldn’t do it without sacrificing performance: “I was just trying to keep a little bit more speed, so I was trying not to accelerate as hard going out wide, and I wasn’t very fast. It makes me sad because the same problems continue and I can’t can’t fix it. When you keep banging your head against the wall, you’re looking for a solution.”
These vibrations were visible several times during qualifying and a slow motion broadcast by MotoGP perfectly illustrated Miller’s difficulties, almost happy to have such images to show to the KTM engineers so that they could understand the extent of his difficulties. .
“It’s been my life for ten months, we haven’t managed to correct that. It’s very good to see in slow motion because at normal speed, you don’t notice it. The swinging arm is very stressed. C It’s very good to see it clearly in slow motion for the engineers. I’m not making up this bullshit, it’s been happening for ten months, since we had this tire, and I haven’t found a solution, like you. ‘have seen.’
“The solution is to try to deal with it but it’s like continuing to bang your head against a wall. […] We have made yet another radical change in the balance of the bike [samedi] and that seems to calm her down a little but it was still there in the last sector, in the double left.”
And after a race finished in tenth position, Miller was pleased not to have encountered the same difficulties as Brad Binder, who suffered big slides from the front, but deplored that his problems were still not resolved: “We’re having a little trouble with speed in the middle of the curve and out of the corner. The front is stable and it’s been good all race but we still have work to do.”
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