Fuel load and tyre wear: how they shape a race 🔎 | MotoGP™ Workshop

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:02]Oh, Banya up the inside now of Mark Marquez. They're all pounding past him.

[00:00:08]>> He doesn't have the feeling, that confidence to push right at the start on fresh tires with a full fuel tank.

[00:00:14]>> I lose a lot of time in the first laps because when the tire is new, I don't know. I'm not ready to to ride the bike. I I don't feel well.

[00:00:23]>> Yeah, the behavior change at the beginning of the race and the end of the race for sure. And in some tracks change a lot. The weight of the tank is more or less 16 kilos and the end of the race is zero near zero. So higher mass means less performance, less acceleration. Uh is also less deceleration on braking.

[00:00:43][music] The other thing is that the center of mass change. So higher weight on the tank means that you are struggling to stop the bike also because [music] the weight transfer is increased and so you have less weight on the rear and more on the front. For this reason some riders [music] can have more problems to stop the bike with this at the beginning of the race. depends on the track but in some tracks you feel a drop on the fuel so you can break a bit later in the long brakings. Uh you feel also big drop on the rear tire. When everybody have a good tire performance they can use that kind of extra advantage but I'm struggling to have it.

[00:01:27]We need to understand why. And the other big thing that changes the performance, especially of the rear tire [music] at the beginning of the race, usually the front and rear tire are not on the correct temperature. So depending on the track, you need two to five laps to get the correct temperature. end of the race you lose performance because uh you can uh have the tire that is at high temperature but also you have a lot of wear on the on it. This depending on the track and depending on the which rear tire you choose.

[00:02:06]If you are in some very demanding track and you put a soft tire on the rear then for sure at the end of the race you can lose 2 seconds easily.

[00:02:16]When the track the track is uh quite demanding on the on the tires, you need to be very careful in the first part and just try to push a little bit more and more love by laps.

[00:02:26]>> The riders in Moto GP can affect the performance much more than the bike.

[00:02:31]Maybe this is why it's so good to see this part. They can change the riding style braking and accelerating in a different way. Trying not to push a lot on the tires when the tire are used.

[00:02:44]Another things is to use the tire in a good way throughout the race. So not abuse of of it at the beginning of the race trying to keep the wear under control. These are the major aspects between the start and the end of the race.