
One sentiment often repeated was that there weren’t enough usable front Michelin tires, causing some riders to curtail their second-day running (Thursday) in hope of getting both long runs and hot laps on a cleaner Friday track. Jorge Lorenzo, who complained of being unable to improve on Thursday, went to the top on Friday with a 1:54.81 lap at 9 PM, a half-second clear of 2nd. The Hondas are still handicapped by slowed corner exits (at 10 p.m. Friday Marquez was 6th, Crutchlow 7th, and Pedrosa 14th fastest). Marquez said they’d moved forward from Wednesday: “…but we still have some problems exiting corners. The pace we have is good although we are still finding it difficult to get rear grip.” Crutchlow said: “…we can’t brake into the corner and turn the bike as we would like,” and noted that, “some of the tires [are] impossible to use due to vibrations.” There was suggestion that this vibration was caused by out-of-round, which if true would suggest these tires were made in extreme haste. Production tires are inflated on a rim, then spun to measure for out-of-round, and are rejected if out of specification.

Ducatis continued to be fast, with Scott Redding moving up to 2nd quickest at 10 p.m. Friday. On Thursday he had said, “I had a lot of grip at the rear and little confidence at the front. This is the problem that we must try to solve.” Vinales on the Suzuki was consistently fast throughout the test, being fastest on Thursday, and second and third-fastest at 9 and 10 p.m. Friday. Iannone, second quickest on Thursday, had said “…in my opinion we’ve got a very good, competitive package at this track, and there is room for improvement.” Ducati’s good performance is attributed by many to the common software being based on their software, making it familiar to their crews and better adapted to the nature of their engines. While the Japanese makers tend to develop engine power with a view to its ease of being ‘civilized by software,’ Ducati engineer for maximum power and then try to make that usable. It appears that the Michelin fronts need at least a full lap to warm up, as opposed to the 2-3 corners that the Bridgestones needed (recall that faster warm-up was a goal of the changes to Bridgestone in 2014). A number of falls were attributed to cold fronts.

That not everyone had front/rear weight balance right yet seemed attested by Pol Espargaro’s Thursday comment that “…we still need to get more rear grip. At first I thought the dirty track may have been behind the lack of grip, but that’s not the case, so we need to improve in this area, which will be our main target for tomorrow” (when he was 6th quickest at 9 p.m. and 9th at 10 p.m., after being out of the top ten on Thursday). He also said his crash was caused by pushing too hard: “I felt that we had chatter and movement, like some other riders.” It remains interesting that putting on a new tire did not improve lap times, causing Marquez to say: “The lap times are the same with both new and used tires. We could not take advantage of the new rubber and that is something we are working on the most.” The possibility that out-of-round was behind the tire vibration some riders felt suggest that Michelin are driving their tire development very hard. This in turn suggests that tires could very well be different again at the first GP. Final combined times from the three-day MotoGP test:
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