WSBK – Small secrets of envelopes … –

Little secrets of envelopes…

WSBK - Small secrets of envelopes ... -

The Australian Supersport race, the second event of the season, was marked by pneumatic disappointment for some competitors. A phenomenon all the more incomprehensible as it only affected certain pilots and not others…

The Australian Supersport race, the second event of the season, was marked by a pneumatic disappointment for some competitors, starting with Sebastien Charpentier and Kevin Curtain: the two top drivers of last season, favorite logics of the Phillip Island race, were victims in the race of defective envelopes (see our).

A phenomenon all the more incomprehensible as it only affected certain pilots (Charpentier, Curtain, Checa, Nannelli, Roccoli …) and not others (Foret, Sofuoglu and Parkes)…

Sebastien Charpentier had bet on a hard tire at the front and a soft tire at the rear. According to his tactics, the hard front tire should have allowed him to maintain real efficiency on the track in the last laps. Unfortunately, even before halfway through the race, his rear tire literally destroyed, which did not give him the opportunity to test his tactics to the end..

The French driver, double world champion, could not keep pace with the first and saw the future winner of the event, his compatriot Fabien Foret, come back to him..

But Sebastien, by finishing fourth in the race, limited the damage. For him, the main thing after his fall in Qatar () was to score as many points as possible. In fact, the big loser of the Australian round is Kevin Curtain who finished in eleventh place.

After the race, the Pirelli box was therefore transformed into a veritable office of tears: the main victims obviously blame the consistency of the manufacturing quality of the tires offered at Phillip Island..

The fact remains that the Australian circuit is one of the tracks which tortures the tires the most: the pilots indeed remain long sequences on the maximum angle and the very long left turn which controls the straight line increases in a vertiginous way the temperature of the rubber (up to 140 ° C on the left side!)…

A draft explanation that will certainly not console either Charpentier or Curtain, given the astonishing difference in rear tire wear that we could see on arrival…

A. LAFFUT – Photos DR

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