Thoughts from a racer on Michelin Tires...

One of my racers Tom Savoca made the switch from Dunlop to Michelin. Now for those of you who don't know, or haven't heard of Tom let me give you a little bit of background. Tom is a no bullshit guy...he did a whole bunch of AMA stuff with the ESP boys and then had a serious flesh wound injury that kept him off the bike for awhile. Tom is fast and possesses a racers heart. He wants to race everyone and lives for the battle on the track...he will also be the first guy over to help you after beating you in a race.

BTW Tom is somewhere between 50 and million years old...but you'd never know it because he bounces off the track like a kid.

Tom sent this to me...and I really felt there was some useful information for many racers. Now you may not agree with Tom...but he has earned his opinions and the respect of many at the National level.






"First of all let me just say I do not consider myself an expert. I have not been doing this long enough and guys like ESP, Jim Cox with Dunlop , Dale Keifer with Michelin, and Roger Heemsbergen of Arroyo Seco have way more experience with race tires and motorcycles than I will ever have.

What I can tell you is my experience from a non experienced racer that has done as much as possible to gain that experience and most of all just plain ride as much as I can in short time to gain that knowledge.

This is not meant as a tire comparison, as all of today's tires are well above most of our abilities, IMO.

The reason I decided to ride on Michelin was simple, they pay the most, hands down. With their new 2010 pricing they are one of the best value for race tires you can get.

Now that I have had 4 race weekends in 2010 on the Michelins I feel able to give my feedback on my experience with the tires. I am within a few tenths of my best lap times and I am just getting up to my former race mentality that I had back in spring of 2007 when I did the AMA stuff.

What I can tell you, is that I believe the 1246 slick front Michelin tire is the best front tire I have ever ridden. There are some things that you have to consider however, when you ride this tire. It wants to be loaded. Now there is a difference between loading the front tire and going in hard and crushing the front tire. It doesn't like for you to crush it, it wants loading to a point, because of it's stiff sidewall. Get to that sidewall and just carve the corner. The tire has remarkable side grip and I still have found myself saying after a corner, " I could have carried much more corner speed there", they love carousels!

The V DOT front is somewhat similar but hey, it's not a slick. There is a reason slicks are better than DOT's, so no, you will not get the same out of the DOT than the slick. Treat them appropriately.

The rears have above average grip but more importantly they have very predictable exit grip. I have put well over 100 laps on a set of DOT's and yes the rear would spin and not give you any drive, but I was amazed how well it stayed under the bike and did not step out. I have found the best grip is from laps 3 -20 at pace which is a big chunk of laps with a kick ass tire.

Pressures. This is where ya hear all different things. I know most other manufactures use hot pressure and some want to do that with their Michelins. Hell, when I started riding them again after the Dunlop's I was checking the hot and readjusting and testing and trying to figure out what to run them.

Guess what folks, I think Michelin has a reason they tell you set the cold pressure and leave it. I always wondered why everybody thinks they know more than Michelin. I mean, don't you think Michelin wants you to get the most from your tires?? What we have found is, the cold set them and leave them method works. I think you could check them hot but then you also need to check the tire temp first and make sure it's at the same temp before you put it to a corresponding pressure. I believe they cool down very quickly as you come in and are not at the operating temp when you check the pressure hot. I'll stick what Michelin recommends, it works.

If you have any questions I would be happy to talk with you, but as I said you can't get better knowledge than the above mentioned guys. Have fun at the track. Thanks to Michelin it makes racing affordable for me this year.

Tom Savoca
#751
Team ESP
Sponsored by ESP, Michelin Tires, Arroyo Seco Raceway, Speedcell (the real one with Josh Kauffman)"

 

interesting.

 

+1

I'm no fast guy but I've had good luck setting the pressures cold and racing them per Michelin's (Walt's) instructions. That V front is a great tire. I run the 160 on my lwt bike, usually the B. Love it.

 

I never have (and never will) understand the idea behind setting pressures cold. A tire set cold at 35º ambient is going to behave differently than a tire set cold at 75º ambient. It's going to have a different gain and a completely different feel. It just doesn't make sense.

Hot off the warmers or hot off the track is the only constant.

 

and exactly what made me QUIT "setting it and forgetting it"

After a session in about 35* temps, where I set the front to about 28PSI IIRC to start out with, I fell down in the bowl at tally. Front just would not regain grip for shit. I rode it out holding it up on my knee until I hit the grass, then fell down at about 10mph it seemed.

I picked up the bike, rode to the corner worker, got the OK to cross the track, stopped by tech to show them my bike was fine, got to my pit, and checked my pressures.......... they were about 38psi STILL at that point.

I use hot pressures, Instructions be damned

 

I just haven't found anyone from Michelin that could explain it to me.

So I'm supposed to put the tire at a fixed cold psi in the morning (when the ambient and track temps are low) and it will magically adjust itself to the perfect psi for every condition, ambient temperature, pace, track temp, track surface and whatnot for the rest of the day?

C'mon.

 

Per morning? OK, I can buy that.

If I have two riders and set pressures cold and the bike goes out and gets run at a top 5 expert pace and the other bike set at the same pressure goes out and gets run at a intermediate track day pace, those tires are going to come off the track at different pressures. Guaranteed.

How are the pressures maintained throughout the day? The tire comes off the track hot and goes on warmers. At what point will the tires be "cold" again?

By the way, I'm not attacking you or asking you specifically. Just asking in general. To be honest, I'm interested in the logic behind it. None of the Michelin vendors have been able to answer that question for me thus far.

 

I set my tires COLD then plug in the warmers. Don't have to worry about having the tires plugged in all day because I'm fast enough to wear them out before that happens.

 

WOW! That is the first time I have heard anyone compliment Michelin's front tire. I actually thought differently. I thought the rear was amazing!!! But I almost killed my self because I couldn't get a feel from the front. Pirelli front with a michelin rear would be the ultimate tires ( DOT). IMO

 

Haha. I was actually going to get in touch with you about this seeing how I can't get a straight answer trackside for some of my customers.

 

Despite everything, I think the V front is a good tire. It's the rears that we had problems with.

 

so much for one formula for all.

 

Yup, my riders loved the V front.Our problem was also with the rear, but we are endurance racing. I think if we were only doing Solo 20's or Sprints, we would not have any issues.
As far as setting tire pressure, we went with the suggested cold pressure of the day.

 

Did you ever check the pressures when they were on the warmers for 45min to an hour? Just curious, I'm using/trying Michelin this year and would like to hear more feedback other than just set at 22 rear cold and 28 front cold.

The logic I used to try them is if Rob Jensen uses them, they can't be that bad!:up:

 

I really liked the last set of tires, and cant figure out what people bitch about, about them.

I am not "fast" in the grand scheme of things, but I am not slow.

The rear has always given me great feedback and grip, and when it did spin it was predictable. I have ran them down to BALD, and they were still predictable at a pretty quick pace.

Front has always been confidence inspiring (PRC) and gave me plenty of warning when it started to push and slide as well.

My pace is a consistent top 5 novice racer pace (laptime) albeit at trackdays..... racing got too expensive for me.

 

After my "incident" with them doing the cold set it and forget it drill.......

I now set them at 21/28 cold. Put them on warmers and run them in, then set them at 25/31 hot back at the pits....... 26/32ish hot on pit road if I take a gauge out there to the wall.

Seems to work PERFECT for me........ your mileage may vary.

 

As a Midwest resident I couldn't agree more. We regularly have mornings below freezing, and then ride all day. We see temps go from 28 to 68 over the course of a single day.

Hot off the track never lies, especially when you're using a pyrometer for consistent readings.

 

not postive about this but i think the v front (if thats what you were using) is recommended for either 60 or 70 degree weather and higher. but i've used them when it was 40 or so and they worked well

 

PRC...... the predecessor to the V. I used it mainly because of its profile, none of the other tires had that profile, so I pretty much had to use it no matter the temps unless I wanted to monkey with geometry