Michelin Rubber Ready for 2016 MotoGP Season Opener

The 2016 MotoGP season is all set to mark its beginning today. The first race of this season will take place at the Losail International Circuit, Qatar. There will be a total of eighteen races with the final race scheduled for November 13th in Spain. This season, the focus will remain on a few riders like Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa, who performed well in the 2015 season. All the motorcycles will be riding on the new Michelin tyres this season. The Michelin rubber is ready to roll after being put to rigorous tests.

The action for this MotoGP edition started from March 17th with a free practice session followed by two more sessions on Friday. On Saturday, there was the qualifying session to decide the starting line-up for the inaugural race.

Speaking about the first race of the season, Nicolas Goubert, Head of Michelin Racing, was quoted saying, “We are looking forward to the first race, because we have been getting ready for it for over a year. It has been a lot of hard work to get to this position and we are now prepared for competitive action. We are quite confident about heading to Qatar, because we learnt a lot during the test sessions that we had two weeks before the race. The riders are satisfied with the improvements we have made from the beginning of the season, and there was a positive feeling at the end of the test.”

Talking about the weather conditions, he added, “Having a race at night gives extra issues, where we can encounter lower temperatures and the added difficulty of dew on the surface. Plus the wind blast blowing sand on the track, making it quite abrasive and giving it a sandpaper effect, which impacts tyre wear. We have worked hard to give the riders the best tyres for this circuit and we are now excited to get into competitive action.”

Piero Taramasso, Manager of Michelin MotoGP Programme, was quoted saying, “We are all motivated to get back to Qatar and the first round, especially with it being Michelin’s return and the special atmosphere of this night race. Logistics are very important, because the Qatar event is not the easiest one to manage and all our consignments of tyres and equipment has to be shipped in containers, but we have prepared for that and we’ll be ready for the first race. We are really looking forward to getting back into MotoGP action.”

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