MOTOGP » Inside Racing: Bike tyre technology

A small percentage about bikes and what little there was was very superficial. As for the intro and outro banging on about the contact patch "the size of 20c coin", (euro, I suppose, seeing as they're not currently used in the USA), well that's a mere 22mm. A 125 front has a bigger contact area than that, nevermind the SBK tyres shown in the video. The narrator obviously didn't bother listening to the technician explaining that a superbike rear needs a LARGE contact patch to transmit 200bhp to the track. Utter waste of time.

Put motogp cross ply's on n lets all see some major fun on the track YEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAAAA

i wonder if we can submit questions...? mine would be why is dunlop saddling the moto2 machines with 60/65 series rubber (ie. 190/195's) when they are only 599cc engines...? teams can sort the geometry, but whatever extra power those engines are tuned to make over say a WSS tenkate bike, is certainly negated by the extra inertia of that HUGE contact patch (and corresponding 6-6.5" rear rim). i contend part reason why the M2 machines are slow is because dunlop is using Moto2 to develop 200+ hp rubber with machines that only make 140(B)hp.

@ shamarone,

Have you read any additional information in what the state of tune the Moto 2 engines are now? Last year they were tuned to 125 HP. A full blown WSS machine is making 140-145 HP.

no, not as of late. i heard it was somewhere in that 110-140 range. 125...? hell that makes the load their lugging that much worse.

Back in March 2010, Mike Webb was quoted on the MotoGP.com site as saying Moto2 engines produced 'approximately 140bhp'. If you were being honest, you wouldn't call 125bhp even approximately 140bhp, but of course it depends on where and how it's measured. Manufacturers used to take the power needed to turn the drivetrain and add it back onto the rear wheel bhp to give higher crankshaft bhp figures for better looking comparison with their competitors. If wheel/tyre sizes were swapped between WSS and Moto2 it would be interesting to see the effect on corner speed and top end due to the rolling resistance and grip changes.

Crash, what a boring topic. How are we going to get Rossi versus Stoner nonsense into this thread?

Nebar1, It's obvious, if this were 2015 and Stoner was on a moto2 bike using WSS rubber and Rossi was on a WSS machine using moto2 rubber, Vale would kick Casey's butt----FACT.

Well done Slim, you managed to do it.