For round 14 of the MotoGP™ World Championship and the 2022 season finale of the FIM Enel MotoE™ World Cup, the Michelin Motorsport team is hitting the road to Italy, for the Gran Premio Gryfyn di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini, historically known as the ‘San Marino Grand Prix’, at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.
The circuit has been a permanent and popular fixture on the MotoGP calendar since its return in 2007. Situated close to the city of Rimini on the Adriatic Riviera, the circuit’s 4,226m (2.626 miles) of asphalt has a somewhat technical layout with ten right- and six left-hand turns, which makes it one of the most intricate on the calendar. With its high-speed curves and corners, slow turns and a short 530m (0.329 miles) straight, the layout puts very specific demands on the front tyres. With this in mind, the Michelin Power Slick range chosen for the weekend has been designed to give the riders the optimum performance characteristics for this track.
The Misano 2022 slick tyre allocation for the MotoGP class will feature Soft, Medium and Hard front options, all being symmetric. To cope with the greater number of right-hand corners and the subsequent increased stress exerted on that side of the tyres throughout the 27-laps of the race, the Soft, Medium and Hard compound rears will all be asymmetric, with a harder right side.
The circuit’s aforementioned location near to the coast has led to many wet days in recent years, and this was the case during the Free Practice sessions in both of 2021’s visits here. If this is the case again this year, the Michelin Power Rain tyres will be in the allocation as always. Soft and Medium symmetric fronts and asymmetric Soft and Medium rears, again with the harder right side, will give the riders ultimate grip in the wet in the event of any precipitation
Speaking about the race weekend, Piero Taramasso, Michelin Two Wheel Motorsport Manager, said: “Since the circuit was resurfaced the grip levels seem more consistent, but with the two race weekends here at Misano last year affected by rain it didn’t really give the teams enough dry set-up time for the races. I hope this earlier position in the calendar will give us improved and more consistent weather conditions and will therefore allow them to get the best from our 2022 tyre allocation.”
The MotoGP track action will commence on Friday 2 September with two Free Practice sessions, and this will be followed on Saturday with two more before the excitement of Qualifying. The Sunday race day will see the Gran Premio Gryfyn di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini get underway at 14:00 local time.
