Fire one up, dude!

At the beginning of last year, things probably seemed pretty good for Michelin. They still had a virtual lock on MotoGP and were part of a full factory effort by Ducati to win the AMA Superbike series after a ten year shutout. I’m sure they were still hurting from World Superbike’s decision to become a Pirelli only series but at least that affected all the tire manufacturers equally. By March, they had taken pole at Daytona, Rossi had put the hammer down in South Africa and the lap times being turned by World Superbike riders were almost two seconds off those set by Michelin riders the previous year. 2004 was going to be a sweet year.

Now fast forward 10 months. With last month’s press release that the factory Ducati MotoGP team would run Bridgestones , this week’s announcement that the Austin Ducati AMA team would run Dunlops and the requirement that the Fila SBK squad use Pirellis, the long-standing image of Ducati’s rolling on Michelin tires has been obliterated.

In fact, with Aprilia seemingly out of MotoGP and Ducatis defection Michelin has lost four Grand Prix riders while only gaining Tamada whose Honda will apparently use the French tires. Another black eye for Michelin was the clear superiority of the Bridgestone qualifying tires in MotoGP as Tamada, Roberts, Hopkins and Nakano all had impressive qualifying times during the previous season. It was even rumored that the Bridgestone rain tires were better but its much harder to quantify that since rider skill, race strategy and bike setup are so much more difficult to separate out during a wet race. (Bridgestone’s highest achievement though was their win at Motegi where a Japanese rider Makoto Tamada on a Japanese Honda motorcycle won the race using the Japanese Bridgestone tires.)

In the AMA, the Michelin tires were a clearly less developed tire compared to the Dunlops which have ruled American road race tracks for almost a decade. It is likely that some of the factory supported teams, like Valvoline Suzuki, will continue to run Michelins in 2005 but none of the factory teams will be providing the much needed technical feedback so the tire R&D can catch up to Dunlop.

Even though the Pirellis were slower at every World Superbike round, the politics of that series mean that they are unlikely to return to the former rules allowing factory teams to run their own tires. Hopefully, with so many riders helping with development, the Pirellis will become a better tire so all those lap records set on Michelin tires will eventually fall as well. On the other hand, if the Pirellis don’t improve their grip then the vicious highsides caused by lots of power and hard tires will result in so many rider injuries that another brand may be brought in to replace them in the name of safety…

Is Michelin going up in smoke? Doubtful but it does appear they’ll have to work that much harder to regain some of the ground they’ve lost for 2005.

[image from www.superbikeplanet.com]