Says new tyres and ECU impact small
Rossi says the impact of MotoGP’s new-for-2016 tyres and control electronics on bike set-up has been smaller than he anticipated.
We tested three or four times with the Michelin tyres last year and this gave us a lot of worries because we were slow, we crashed, we didn’t have feeling with the front. Yamaha worked to develop a [new] bike that is quite different compared to the year before with the Bridgestone, with the different weight distribution and the [fuel] tank on the rear. But the Michelin tyres improved a lot, especially the front and at the end, essentially we are using a very similar set-up compared to Bridgestone, and this is good. With the electronics, we expected a big revolution, a big step back, but at the end it was a half-step back. The bike that I am using now is very similar to last year.