2011 Silverstone MotoGP Monday Round Up - Tires, Elias, Moto2, The Twenty One-Three

The big surprise at Silverstone was not so much the crashes - given the conditions, it was just a matter of waiting for them to happen - it was the riders who crashed out. That Marco Simoncelli went down is less of a surprise

• the Italian is fast, but still errs on the side of bravery, with predictable consequences - but putting money on Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies to crash would have got you long odds indeed, and given a tidy return.

The problem was, of course, the Bridgestone rain tires. Undoubtedly superb in the wet, the cold temperatures in Silverstone (remember, this is mid-June, supposedly the start of summer) combined with the wet meant it was hard to put and keep the heat in the tires during the race. Every lap was like an out lap, Valentino Rossi said, the best description of the situation, describing the need to both simultaneously tiptoe around and not get caught out by the tires, and push hard to try to get some heat into them. Some teams had decided to run two sighting laps to heat the tires before putting them into the tire warmers, but others felt it was too risky, given the length of the Silverstone circuit and the brief period before the pit lane closed. Ramon Forcada had decided that it was too much of a risk, and had sent Lorenzo out on a single lap, and Lorenzo had struggled with heat in the tires all race long.

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