MICHELIN WITHDRAWS SOFT TYRE AND RECOMMENDS HARD AFTER MOTEGI BLISTERING

Jack Miller said he could “almost guarantee” Michelin would make an untested hard tyre compulsory for the Japanese Grand Prix after severe degradation in Saturday’s sprint. Michelin subsequently withdrew the soft rear from the Motegi allocation after several riders suffered blistering, with chunks of rubber breaking away from the centre and leaving a groove. The centre overheated on the straights, with the problems particularly acute for Jorge Martin and Francesco Bagnaia. Martin finished second on the road but was demoted to third for exceeding track limits on the final lap; Bagnaia retired on the last lap.

The reinforced hard was Michelin’s recommended option for Sunday’s 24-lap race, while the medium remained available. The hard paired soft-compound rubber with a heat-dissipating construction like the tyre used at the Red Bull Ring. Michelin said the medium was stronger than the soft, but it still carried a risk: Miller also experienced blistering on it during the sprint. Marco Bezzecchi, who also used the medium, had no such problem.

With no data from Motegi’s new asphalt, Michelin had brought three rear options. The soft and medium used standard constructions, while the hard had a reinforced casing intended for high-stress circuits. Many riders treated it as an emergency backup and did not try it on Friday or Saturday. Bagnaia later said the hard’s performance was a “big surprise, but a nice surprise”, and admitted: “It was a fault of us, of the riders, to not try it before.” He said Michelin had presented it as a backup, but added that riders should test every option because “in the past, we had a situation like this, when the best [tyre] was the ‘other’ one”.

Michelin asked for warm-up to be extended to 20 minutes so riders could sample the hard. Even then, they could not test it over anything close to race distance: Martin, Bezzecchi and sprint winner Marc Marquez tried both compounds and completed only around five to seven laps on the hard. The most any rider managed was 12 laps, half the race. Most went faster on the hard than on the medium, and every rider chose it for the grand prix. Marquez won, with a race time more than 37 seconds faster than Bagnaia’s victory in 2025.

Aprilia team manager Paolo Bonora cautioned that the hard’s effectiveness over a full race remained uncertain. “ [The warm-up] will not be a final decision to understand if the hard compound will be the solution for this problem,” he said. Blistering can emerge late in a race and may become “exponential”; “Once it starts, it starts to be not manageable.” He backed the extra testing time, saying the hard’s construction had “more potential to fix this issue”, but concluded: “Nobody knows after this warm-up session.”

Michelin two-wheeled motorsport manager Piero Taramasso said riders could reduce the danger by limiting wheelspin and the energy put through the rear tyre. “You have to do everything in your power to limit the spinning and put less energy in the rear tyre to keep the temperature as low as possible. So, it’s management,” he said. The hard was Michelin’s recommendation, he confirmed, while the medium remained a risk for teams or riders willing to choose it.

Johann Zarco described the trade-off: some rear-wheel spin is needed to set a fast lap, but too much can overheat the tyre. “The problem is that sometimes you need to spin to go fast and then when you spin you have a blister in the tyre,” he said. Zarco considered the medium safer over the full race, provided riders controlled the spin.

Miller had criticised the hard before the weekend, joking that he might as well go home if it became the race tyre. Luca Marini had also favoured a softer option if one were available. After the sprint, however, the Honda rider said tyre trouble had not affected him: “I don’t have grip, never [laughs], so I don’t stress too much the tyre! So, my one was perfect.”

Zarco said his sprint pace was not limited by the rear tyre. He was disappointed not to match team-mate Diogo Moreira, classified second for his first sprint podium after penalties for Martin and Enea Bastianini. “I feel I'm losing time in the entry of the corner,” Zarco said, adding that he needed to find a solution there to recover pace.

In warm-up, Marquez led on the hard rear, while Bezzecchi and Martin were second and third fastest after setting their best times on the medium. Bezzecchi had been quickest on that tyre in final practice, but finished sixth in the sprint after choosing it. Bagnaia finished eighth in the grand prix, 20.3 seconds behind Marquez and the next-best Ducati rider. “I think we did the maximum with what we have. More than this, difficult,” he said.