The MotoGP grid has pinned the blame for Friday’s crash-strewn day at the Dutch TT firmly on Michelin’s medium front tyre, repeating frequently-heard criticism of the middle of their three front tyre choices.
Two red flags - and six fallers in the first seven minutes - featured in the second practice session, all the riders escaping relatively unscathed.
One of those quick-sucession fallers was Honda replacement racer Aleix Espargaro, who was quick to highlight exactly what he believed was the source of his crash afterwards: the complicated medium front.
💥 @Aldeguer54, @JohannZarco1 and now Morbidelli
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) June 27, 2025
Three separate crashes AT THE SAME TIME 😱#DutchGP 🇳🇱 pic.twitter.com/x40w053wEz
“This front is just not working,” he explained. “It’s like ice. It’s two years that we’ve said the same. I always go from the soft to the hard.
“The soft and the hard are from the same family, with the same feeling, but depending on the temperature you use one or the other. But the medium is like a transport tyre. You lean, and you lose the front.
💥 @Bestia23 and @AleixEspargaro have gone down as well!#DutchGP 🇳🇱 pic.twitter.com/IRWgOTWCPI
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) June 27, 2025
“I’ve said many times in the safety commission to change the allocation, to avoid to use the medium. Today was the typical day where you were not close [in temperature] to the hard, but not able to use the soft.
“It was just 23°C, very difficult, we all went with the medium. There’s no warning.”
With only a limited number of tyres of each compound (no more than five) available in their allocation, some riders felt they were left with no choice but to run the medium early in the session in order to conserve softs for the time attack at the end, something that Fabio Di Giannantonio says needs to be looked at.
“Maybe too small a number of softs,” suggested the VR46 Ducati racer. “For sure we have an allocation, we don't want to waste tyres for many reasons, but we also need to be in a safe situation.
“And Assen is always a tricky weekend in terms of temperature and weather. So, today was, I think everybody put the medium just to save softs, but for sure it wasn't a safe thing to do.
“Because for sure we have to think about not wasting tyres, to save the tyres, but also about the safety. The medium was on the limit. It was rideable but it was on the limit. Maybe for next time we should bring a bit more softs in the van just in case.”
Pramac Yamaha’s Miguel Oliveira went even further, though, hinting that Michelin should simply scrap the medium option all together, and instead concentrate on bringing a soft and hard option that better covers the likely temperature window.
Oliveira indicated this is what riders are favouring for next year.
“I guess everyone was expecting the medium tyre to be kind of normal,” he said afterwards, “if we can say normal in terms of pushing on it, not having weird feelings in terms of closing the front. But I guess we couldn't bring it up to temperature.
“And even if we got it to the temperature range, it was still not enough. And the tyre was quite unpredictable. I actually decided to wait 10 minutes in the garage to just do the time attacks, because I couldn't afford to use another soft front to ride.
"The way we are pushing for next year is to get rid of one compound. This will allow us to have enough tyres for either go with one compound or the other. But it will also be tricky, because if they bring only mediums or hards, today will have been kind of tricky to manage."
A HUGE one for Savadori at T8 😱
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) June 27, 2025
The session is halted again 🚩#DutchGP 🇳🇱 pic.twitter.com/BNIuYXwWlz
The most spectacular of the session's nine crashes (what Marc Marquez's crew chief Frankie Carchedi described as potentially MotoGP's most expensive session ever) belonged to Aprilia duo Ai Ogura and Lorenzo Savadori, both of whom brought out the red flags in separate incidents.
Ogura was left confused afterwards about the cause of his big highside, after admitting that it was the only incident of the rear sliding all day - but was left with only a single machine for much of the session after the fall left his Trackhouse Aprilia on fire for a significant time in the gravel trap.
Savadori was also one of the day's highsiders, falling heavily while using the soft front and rear, not the medium, at Turn 8 but able to return to action once his machine was cleared from where it landed in the middle of the circuit.
