Miguel Oliveira’s early exit from the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday was his fifth retirement from eight 2023 starts – and arguably the oddest of the MotoGP season so far.
The RNF Aprilia rider was forced back to the pits after losing the the wheel-balancing weights from his front tyre, and told The Race it was his belief that a combination of high temperatures and heavy braking at the Red Bull Ring were contributing factors.
Tyre balancing weights are small amounts of lead glued to the rim of a MotoGP wheel ahead of every session in order to correct for minor inconsistencies in the perfect circle of a tyre. In MotoGP they are added by series tyre provider Michelin after using a custom laser jig to ensure the small weights correct any irregularity, and are fitted to practically every single wheel used in motorcycle racing.
The weights are normally held in place by ultra-strong glue, although it’s not uncommon in some series – and races such as the Isle of Man TT – to see a small piece of duct tape also added to the rim to help keep them in place.
On Sunday, the glue seemingly wasn’t enough to contend with the heat generated both by the sun and the forces of braking at the Red Bull Ring, according to Oliveira, leaving his bike unrideable with heavy vibrations as soon as the lights went out for Sunday’s race.
RNF and Oliveira were also running a new design of treated front wheel for the first time, designed to further help reduce front tyre temperatures, and it seems that something in the combination of factors went wrong, causing him to come into the pits after six laps.
“I lost the weight that calibrates the front rim,” Oliveira explained to The Race afterwards. “Both the sides came off and the vibration was really high. I couldn’t stop the bike, and that’s basically the story of my day.
“It’s not usual, and we are investigating a little bit the way the cooling is done together with the big disc.
“The heat and especially the white rims.”
It was the second time in two days that Oliveira was forced onto the sidelines by factors out of his control. In Saturday’s sprint, he was among those wiped out in the multi-bike opening lap crash that Jorge Martin was penalised for.
But he at least avoided serious injury this time, which wasn’t the case in the other two multi-bike collisions that he’d found himself an innocent party in earlier this season.
Oliveira’s unusual Sunday exit left Raul Fernandez to fly the flag solo for RNF, aboard its Barbie-inspired pink-liveried bike to celebrate team partner CryptoData’s title sponsorship of the event as well, but he did not make it to the chequered flag either after tyre problems of his own.
MotoGP riders are unable to blame Michelin outright without financial penalties coming their way and as such are rarely able to lay their frustrations directly at the feet of the tyre supplier, but it was obvious where Fernandez – who retired with a lap to go – believed that his problem during the race laid.
“I will say nothing bad about Michelin,” he said, “because I have nothing bad with them and always my tyre is really good.
“But today I was an unlucky boy. The pace was impossible to manage because the rear grip was not there. I lost everything and on the braking I was a turtle – I couldn’t brake late at all.
“It was a mistake but I don’t want to say that Michelin did a bad tyre because they want to give to us the best tyre performance they can. But today we were unlucky boys and we had a bad tyre. The grip level was zero.
“I went wide, wide, wide, and on the last lap I tried to brake again, to try like yesterday and leave nothing behind. But I went wide and realised it was stupid to continue.”
