2025 might possibly already be the breakthrough year at Yamaha, because with the arrival of the Pramac team and two additional riders on the grid, development work will predictably accelerate. The Yamaha team itself is going through some profound changes, from the farewell of Lin Jarvis as team manager to the arrival of Max Bartolini as technical director, the first European and Italian engineer in Yamaha's history.
In the Crash.net podcast, the Italian engineer goes into detail about one of the development dynamics being worked on: tire grip, now the key to modern MotoGP. There is a difference between front and rear, and if in the past with Bridgestone the front was the "dominant" one, with Michelin the order has reversed giving more emphasis to the rear. One would therefore be forgiven for thinking that development work is focused on the "weaker" tire, but counterintuitively Max Bartolini explains why it is more important to rely on the rear instead in today's MotoGP.
"Normally, of the two tires (front and rear), you always work on the better one," Max Bartolini explains, "For Bridgestone, it was the front tire. The performance of the rear one remained constant throughout the race, never really dropping."
The arrival of Michelin changed things: "When we started with Michelin in 2016, the rear was very good but the front became difficult to handle, not surprisingly there were many accidents in the first tests. However, it must be said that since then Michelin has done a very good job, because now the front is better than in the beginning."
The importance of rear tire grip is now a common topic even among riders, but the engineer points out that it is not just a matter of acceleration: "Grip is greater on the rear, and those who are able to use it 100 percent can be faster. Every corner has a braking phase, an entry phase, a cornering speed phase, and an acceleration phase, but the entry and cornering phases are more difficult than the acceleration itself - if you can't maintain speed in entry and cornering, you will never be able to accelerate," the engineer then pointed out.
All this talk about the importance of rear grip is thus evidently related to the big Gordian knot within Yamaha about abandoning the inline engine in favor of the V4. It seems unlikely that the two projects can continue in parallel, and the tuning fork manufacturer is called upon to make a choice that has all the flavor of a revolution, engineering-wise.