Michelin, the official tyre supplier of the MotoE World Championship, has brought something distinctly intriguing to the second preseason test ahead of the 2024 season.
From a small distance, the new tyre Michelin has brought to MotoE features a very odd, radical, and unusual tread pattern. Since MotoE has been running full slicks since its first season in 2019, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a new rain tyre.
However, when you look at the tyre more closely, you see that the darker parts of the tyre are not grooves at all - there is no tread pattern, the pattern is formed literally by different shades of black in the rubber.
There aren’t many details about the tyre at the moment, but Michelin has already been quite experimental with its MotoE tyres in recent seasons.
Although MotoE has always been a one-make series, first with Energica and now with Ducati, Michelin has been the sole tyre supplier since the first season in 2019. Despite that, MotoE has seen innovation from the motorcycle manufacturers and Michelin.
Ducati, for example, only makes one electric motorcycle, and that is the V21L used by MotoE. It’s hard to call it a ‘prototype’ when there are 20, but it’s not a production-derived racer, like the previous Energica Ego, either.
On the tyre side, Michelin has committed to using recycled materials in the construction of its MotoE tyres. The materials have included orange and lemon peel, pine resin, sunflower oil, hevea sap, and scrap steel.
It seems that, for 2024, Michelin has gone a step further with its tyre innovation for MotoE, even if the most anticipated update from Michelin in the MotoGP paddock is its highly anticipated MotoGP front tyre that’s currently expected to arrive for the 2025 season.
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Lead image credit: Michelin Motorsport/X.
