World Superbike tyre supplier Pirelli is investigating the cause of several rear tyre issues during the Rimini round, and has confirmed it will revert to a stiffer construction SC0 rear tyre for the US round next month.
During the closing stages of the first race at Misano, Yamaha’s Michael van der Mark suffered a failure on his standard SC0 while leading the race.
This followed on from a similar issue Kawasaki’s Jonathan Rea had at Donington Park, when a rear failure flicked him into retirement from race one while battling for the podium.
Rea’s problem was caused by a tear in the development SC0 tyre he had been using, while the carcass of van der Mark’s standard SC0 was found to have a hole in it.Both Rea and van der Mark encountered more rear issues in Sunday’s race, but were able to make it to the finish in third and fourth, respectively.
Althea BMW’s Jordi Torres also hit trouble with his rear tyre, similar to the issue he experienced in race one at Assen which led to a puncture, and was forced to park up four laps from home while running in second spot.
With several different issues cropping up over the course of the Misano weekend, Pirelli are now conducting an in-depth analysis at its factory in Milan, though Pirelli chief Giorgio Barbier admits this will take some time.
“Our goal is to complete the in-depth analysis as quickly as possible in order to clarify the circumstances and causes of this occurrence,” he said.
“Our laboratories in Milan are already at work. Given the complexity of this analysis, a few days will be required to obtain the results.
“In the meantime, until we have clarified and resolved the nature of the problem, we assure you that for the next FIM World Superbike Championship round scheduled to be held at Laguan Seca, we will use solutions that have already been used in the past with complete success.”
While exact causes of the myriad issues Pirelli has encountered in these last two rounds are still be being determined, Barbier suggests that perhaps the greater performance of World Superbikes in 2017 could have played a factor.
He also confirmed that blistering, more akin to what is typically seen at Phillip Island rather than Misano, was present on the tyres, something which has left him bemused.
“The performance of a WorldSBK bike is very impressive, but maybe we need to evaluate using a different tyre that would lead to a slightly slower lap time so that we do not have these issues in the future,” Barbier told motomatters.com.
“At Misano the issues we had were to do with blistering, the tyre suffering like it would at Phillip Island rather than here at Misano.
“It was strange and we need to analyse why it is happening, so it’s best to revert to the older specification (SC0).”
