New Brno surface heats up tyre war

Michelin had been dominant at the circuit until the last two years when Bridgestone-shod riders took both pole positions, victories, and fastest laps.

But the new surface will give Michelin an opportunity to redress the balance as both manufacturers have have just two days of testing, back in June, to decide on their compounds for this year's event.

Bridgestone say they struggled for grip with their test riders but the smoothness of the surface helped to keep lap times as quick.

"We have had to produce different tyre compounds to adapt to the new surface, which appears less grippy than before," said Bridgestone's development manager Tohru Ubukata. "In the past the track has been quite abrasive, but the new surface is very smooth and slippery and it was difficult to find grip from the surface. The times were still quite good because the act of resurfacing the track has reduced the bumpiness.

"We had to adjust the compound of our tyres for this new surface, which we hope will allow all our teams and riders to get off to a good start when practice starts on Friday morning."

Repsol Honda rider Nicky Hayden is looking forward to the new surface and hopes it will help Michelin to regain their advantage over Bridgestone.

"The surface has got quite old in the last couple of years, not really bumpy but just so abrasive and cracked," he said. "I think the brand new surface is going to be awesome. I heard they didn't just put something on top, they did it the right way and started over."

Michelin expect the new surface to be hard on the front tyre but less so on the rear and are expecting significantly quicker times.

The French firm's chief of motorcycle racing, Jean-Philippe Weber, said: "We tried out the surface and those tests told us the track is really aggressive on the front tyre but not so aggressive on the rear, which means the tarmac isn't particularly abrasive but that the combination of the layout and the new surface does work the front very hard."

"We will bring some new compounds to Brno, but we will have to see what our MotoGP riders make of it. We think the track will be considerably faster than it used to be because the old surface was in quite a bad state.

"It will be important to have a wider range of tyres, with a bigger step from tyre one to tyre five than we might have at some other tracks."