The point of the single tire rule, adopted for the 2009 season here at Motegi last year, was to make the racing safer by stemming the breakneck increase in corner speed. At least, that was the reason given officially, but it was an open secret - one accidentally admitted by Carmelo Ezpeleta from time to time - that the real driving force behind the rule was the hope that putting everyone on the same tire would level the playing field, reduce the differences between the riders and make the racing closer.
At Qatar, the first race to be run under the new rule, the official rationale for having a single tire was vindicated, with lap times lower than last year despite warmer temperatures. But the race made a mockery of the unofficial reasoning: The gaps between the riders were huge, with 16 seconds between first and third, and sixth place man Alex de Angelis almost half a minute behind the runaway winner Casey Stoner. So far, it looked like putting riders on equal equipment actually accentuated the differences between them, variations in individual skill now allowing the best of them to build up a huge margin over lesser men.
The season opener had been a rather bizarre affair, though, with the race postponed until Monday after a rainstorm made racing under the floodlights impossible on Sunday, and an extra warm up session had left the riders with limited tire choice. So at Motegi, the place where the single tire rule was formally adopted last year, its proponents hoped that we would get to see a more realistic view of how the rule was working.
The Weathermen
It wasn't the tire rule that everyone was talking about at Motegi, however. Instead, the the reduction in practice time was the target of the teams' and riders' ire: A typical Motegi spring downpour on Saturday afternoon had made the track unrideable and forced qualifying to be canceled, and with Friday morning practice already scrapped under the new rules, the riders entered the race with scarcely any dry track time under their belts, forced to guess both at tire choice and setup.
The loss of qualifying also meant that the grid had been drawn up based on the combined practice times, and as Saturday's morning free practice session had taken place in the rain, this effectively meant that grid position was determined by the outcome of FP1 on Friday. The trouble with that was that everyone had been using the Friday session to work on setup and finding a race tire, rather than going all out for speed, and so the grid suffered some notable losers. Dani Pedrosa, his fitness improved from Qatar, was one, forced to start from 11th, while Randy de Puniet, now resplendent in his Playboy livery, was another, shuffled down to 16th while his team was working on race setup.
But all that was spilt milk as the riders sat on the grid, holding the bike on the rev limiter while they waited for the red lights to dim. With the conditions sunnier and track temperatures warmer than they had been on Friday, there was nothing that the riders could do but hope the guesses made by their crew and tire technicians were correct, and watch the lights.
