FIM mandate MotoGP tyre pressure sensors

The FIM have, in the wake of Loris Baz’s high-speed crash earlier this week at Sepang, mandaded the compulsory use of tyre pressure sensors for the forthcoming MotoGP season.

With a sensor supplier already in place for Moto2, which was already set to adapt the rule for 2016, the move is expected to be an easy roll-out for the premier class too. In fact, a number of teams, including the official Repsol Honda squad (pictured) were already running the sensors at the Sepang test.

The move comes after Baz’s crash was originally speculated to have been caused by the team running a pressure below that mandated by Michelin in a quest for more grip. A similar problem, causing a number of failures for Dunlop in 2015, was the reason for the introduction of the rule to the middleweight class.

The cause of Baz’s crash has yet to be determined, but did result in Michelin withdrawing their softest option tyres for the remainder of the test.

Existing regulations on this matter have been reinforced enabling the Technical Director and his staff, assisted by the engineers of the official tyre supplier, to check that minimum tyre pressures are respected.
Ultimately, such information will be recorded automatically via the datalogger and be available via download by the technical staff. However, as the equipment and method of electronically recording the information has still to be finalised the technical staff and the staff of the official tyre supplier are now authorised to manually verify tyre pressures at any time.