For the fifth meeting of the season, MotoGP returns to Le Mans and its 4.185 km circuit, a track which is not one of the most difficult to understand in terms of tires. The demands of this technical track on the rubber are of medium intensity and the bitumen offers a good level of grip, making the weather conditions a challenge often more complex than the type of track.
“For us, it’s always a special Grand Prix because it’s our home event. We are in France, not very far from Clermont-Ferrand,” underlines Piero Taramasso for the Italian edition of Motorsport.com. “As far as the characteristics of the track are concerned, it is not a very demanding circuit from a pneumatic point of view and it even offers quite good grip, so wear is generally rather contained. This is not a coincidence if this is the track where we will adopt the softest tires on the entire MotoGP calendar.”
In both slick and grooved tires, MotoGP’s sole manufacturer provides tires with a symmetrical tread at the front and asymmetrical tread at the rear, with a stiffer right sidewall to respond to the nine right-hand corners of the track. The centering of the rubber tends towards soft and medium-soft, the same as last year.
“We must remember that in 2023, [la gomme avant] the most used was the software”, recalls Piero Taramasso, “even if the track temperature was 35°C. One of the particularities of Le Mans, in fact, is that even if the asphalt is hot, the air is still quite cool and this tends to cool the front tire. C This is the reason why pilots generally move towards a soft solution.”
As for the rear tire, the Michelin manager specifies: “Last year, everyone used the soft, both in the sprint and in the long race. Based on the weather forecast, we should have sunshine and fairly similar temperatures, so I think everyone could opt for the soft again this weekend.”
The weather forecast tends towards mild conditions for this motorcycle festival weekend in Sarthe. According to Météo France, the sky will be cloudy at most for the first two days of the track, with temperatures reaching 24 to 25°C in the afternoon. However, the weather should change on Sunday, with the arrival of thunderstorms preceded by very cloudy weather. Everyone hopes that the storms will only hit in the evening, so that the races can all take place in the dry.
Furthermore, despite the good weather forecast, we know at Michelin that temperatures generally vary quite significantly between the first sessions of the morning and the hottest time of the day, and freshness remains an element to take into account.
A Michelin tire
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
“[Les solutions sont] obviously adapted to the new typology of rubbers of 2024”, Piero Taramasso further specifies, “tires which had been designed to be more constant but which we understood, from the winter tests, that they were also able to offer more grip, particularly on the angle. We were indeed able to notice not only that the times have fallen, but also that the speeds going through the bends have increased.”
At Le Mans, the records date from 2022, with a pole position of 1’30″450 and a best race time of 1’31″778, both obtained by Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati). It was also two years ago that the total race time was the fastest, whenEnea Bastianini (Ducati) completed the 27 laps in 41 minutes, 34 seconds and 613 thousandths. The only change observed last season: the best top speed was beaten by Brad Binder’s KTM, with a V-max displayed at 325.8 km/h.
Comments collected by Matteo Nugnes
