As Motorsport.com Italia reports, Michelin is hurtling toward the final five races of its decade-long MotoGP adventure, closing out a cycle that began back in 2016. Curiously, this final stint kicks off at a venue that says goodbye not just to the French rubber manufacturer, but to the entire MotoGP circus. Next year, the Australian Grand Prix moves to a new street circuit in Adelaide, marking this weekend as our absolute last chance to watch premier-class machines tearing around the legendary Phillip Island layout. Piero Taramasso, the man leading Michelin's two-wheel operations, broke down why this beast of a circuit is so unique.
"Phillip Island is an atypical circuit, very fluid, that turns to the left and has a good seven rather long corners on that side, which put a lot of stress on that part of the tire, which is also the one that suffers the most wear," Taramasso explained to Motorsport.com Italia. The right-handers are fewer at just five, and they hardly ask anything of the rubber. With mediocre asphalt grip despite a 2024 resurfacing, plus the wild cards of cold wind and incoming rain, stable conditions are basically a pipe dream.
To tackle this final Aussie farewell, Michelin has brought an allocation featuring three front and two rear options, all of them asymmetric with a beefier left shoulder. They are the exact same solutions that performed well last year, designed to comfortably bridge a wide spectrum of weather. Speaking of the skies, the forecast hints at rain for both Saturday and Sunday. Michelin is fully armed for it with two distinct wet tire choices: the soft, built for cold track temps and standing water, and the medium, tailored for a mere damp track with a bit of extra warmth.
Shifting gears back to the scorching heat of Mandalika, Taramasso labeled the Indonesian weekend a clear success despite grueling track temperatures hitting 57 degrees during the Sprint and 55 for the long race. Raul Fernandez stunned the paddock on Friday by smashing the lap record with a 1'28"7, before Sunday's Grand Prix saw Marco Bezzecchi and Fernandez check out early. Jorge Martin cruised to a lonely third, while a fierce scrap for fourth saw Ai Ogura complete an Aprilia poker ahead of Pedro Acosta and Marc Marquez. Bezzecchi even set the fastest lap on his 19th tour, helping push the race pace 17 seconds faster than before.
That heat brought familiar tire pressure headaches. Martin admitted a miscalculation on the front pressure cost him a shot at the Sprint win, while Acosta hit the exact same trap on Sunday. Mandalika is a tricky beast where pressures simply refuse to climb easily even when boiling, catching teams out when they run too close to the margin. Meanwhile, Michelin is investigating a bizarre issue for Fabio Di Giannantonio, whose reference front tire lost a small piece of rubber. With roughly 3,000 of those specific 70H tires used annually without a hitch, engineers are hunting for an external cut or debris that might have torn the tread as it heated up on the run home.
