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| Bridgestone debuted an asymmetric front slick at this year's Australian GP. |
An internal Bridgestone memo regarding this year's tyre issues at Phillip Island has been leaked to TotoMoto for its launch article, describing in detail the issues surrounding the new asymmetric front and Jorge Lorenzo's 'complete disaster' tyres.
Following last year's compulsory mid-race pit stop to change tyres due to safety concerns, Bridgestone has undertaken extensive testing over the past year at Phillip Island in order to create a tyre that could withstand the demanding surface conditions.
Prior to the Australian GP, Bridgestone's Shinji Aoki had high praise for the newly designed asymmetric front that would debut at the weekend.
"...this asymmetric front slick will ensure that the riders will still enjoy the same high level of braking stability they associate with our symmetric front slick, but with better grip and warm-up performance while cornering."
However despite the advances made, newly crowned world champion Marq Marquez, Pol Espargaro and Cal Crutchlow all fell while racing with the asymmetric front.
A memo was subsequently distributed to senior Bridgestone personnel as well as MotoGP organisers on Monday following round 16 in Australia, and has been leaked exclusively to TotoMoto by an anonymous source. Within the document Shinji Aoki states that tyre performance met Bridgestone's expectations after the issues faced the previous year.
"Tyre performance throughout the twenty-seven laps of the race was very consistent, but unfortunately in the final stages there were a few incidents."
The memo continues with the various positive statistics on the performance of the asymmetric front tyre that debuted at Phillip Island, before identifying the cause of the incidents.
"Only three riders [Marquez, P. Espargaro & Crutchlow] using the asymmetric front suffered incidents during the race. Upon debrief with their respective teams Bridgestone has concluded the tyre was fitted the wrong way around, thus rendering the softer compound on the right shoulder inert."
The implication of course is obvious; the rider's were still able to benefit from the same braking stability of a symmetric tyre, but by fitting the tyre in reverse the predominantly left handed circuit made use of the softer compound component, whilst the fewer right hand corners had to contend with the harder compound meant for the left. Lowside crashes were all but guaranteed as a result.
The memo continues by stating that the teams were informed of their mistake, and in future Bridgestone would label each side of the tyre "L" and "R" accordingly to avoid further confusion.
Remarks by Jorge Lorenzo that his tyres were 'defective' are also addressed in the footnotes.
Bad luck with the defective tyre but very lucky with the result! #keepfighting pic.twitter.com/XlHo2JiWqK
— Jorge Lorenzo (@lorenzo99) October 19, 2014
Lorenzo suffered severe tyre degradation on route to "probably [his] luckiest second place" at Phillip Island, and subsequently accused Bridgestone of providing him defective tyres in a post-race interview.
"With regards to the provision of tyres to the Movistar Yamaha team, Lorenzo's assertion that they were defective is incorrect, however Bridgestone is not entirely blameless. It would appear that Lorenzo's tyre allocation was mistakenly provided to Valentino at Austin, and he instead received Valentino's tyre allocation intended for the second round in the Americas."
"At this stage it would not be beneficial for Bridgestone to reveal this information to the Factory Yamaha team. Senior management has confirmed we will maintain the position that tyre behaviour is determined by each individual rider's set-up."
