MotoGP’s big moment: 850 era starts next Monday at Brno

Finally, MotoGP’s new era begins in earnest next Monday, when the championship’s full-time riders – Marco Bezzecchi, Marc Márquez, Diogo Moreira, Toprak Razgatlıoğlu and others – all ride Pirelli-equipped 850s for the first time, during a one-day Pirelli test at Brno following the Czech Grand Prix.

This test is hugely significant because MotoGP’s new rules are its biggest technical shake-up since the championship was born in 1949. Whereas the move to big four-strokes in 2002 changed engine capacity and minimum weight, the 2027 regulations change engine capacity, chassis spec, aerodynamics and electronics, with the banning of clutch software used by the manufacturers in recent years.

The Brno test (to which media and fans won’t be admitted) will also be significant because the feedback from the full-time riders will play an important part in the final stages of development of Pirelli’s first range of spec MotoGP tyres.

“It’s a big moment because we must have our 2027 MotoGP tyres defined in September, October, in order to produce and ship our tyres to the first tests and races of 2027,” says Pirelli’s director of motorcycle racing Giorgio Barbier. “It’s clear to us that we are now starting the most important part of testing, from Brno to September.

“I’m really curious to see what the full-time riders will do at Brno, because for sure they’re more aggressive [than the manufacturers’ test riders, who have led development until now] and they’re used to riding a different way. We need different feedback to understand if we are going in the right direction, so Brno will be very important from this point of view because we will be able to increase, if not complete, our knowledge of what will be our first range of tyres for next year.”

Just as important as Márquez and others making their 850 debuts at Brno is the fact that Pedro Acosta, Fabio Quartararo, Pecco Bagnaia, Jorge Martin and others won’t be testing. Why? Because they are changing brands for 2027 and manufacturers won’t let riders try their 850s before they move to rival brands.

MotoGP’s full-time riders will get two more chances to try the 850s and Pirellis before the usual winter testing moratorium begins in December: at Red Bull Ring, following September’s Austrian GP, and during the annual post-Valencia GP tests in late November.

Those riders changing brands should get to try the Pirellis with their current bikes during the Red Bull Ring tests, but they won’t experience the 850/Pirelli combination until Valencia.

Thus, it’s a bad time to be switching manufacturers and, ironically, there have never been more riders swapping brands than from this year to next!

What most fans want to know about MotoGP’s new tyres is whether the hated minimum-tyre-pressure rule will be discarded from 2027.

Although the rule will remain for 2027, Barbier says teams won’t need to use low pressures to find more front grip with his tyres, so the rule should become redundant.

“Sometimes teams have the idea that they will find the same feature in Pirelli that they’re used to [with the current tyres],” says Barbier. “At the moment they are worried about front-tyre pressure, because of what happened at Catalunya, for instance. [Five riders were penalised at last month’s Catalan GP for using front tyres below the minimum-pressure limit.]

“We use higher pressures because our tyres work well at higher pressures, so why deflate the tyres? Because it’s not necessary. But the teams are still thinking that if they deflate the front tyre they will have better performance.”

Barbier also says Pirelli’s front slick will offer more feedback than MotoGP’s current Michelin front.

“We are giving riders more feedback on the front, so the way to use the bike coming into corners and through corners is completely different,” Barbier adds. “You don’t need to load the tyre and wait for the right load before you turn. You just load and go. This is changing some riders’ riding style and that’s why it’s really important to test at Brno with the full-time guys, because they need to understand.

“It was funny two years ago – and it will be this year as well – when we did the Race of Champions at Misano with Ducati, with their World Superbike and MotoGP riders. Last time used our SC1 and SCX superbike tyres with standard Panigales, in fact not so standard, the bikes were very fast.

“The MotoGP riders immediately said, ‘Oh, the front is very good. Yes, it’s soft, but you can feel it and you can trust on it’. This is a Pirelli character, so the riders need to avoid the soft feeling becoming a problem, but the easy way they can trust the front tyre when they put the bike into the corner should remain the same. And [MotoGP’s current problem of] the failure to put the bike into the corner [i.e., losing the front] needs to disappear.

“The feedback we’ve had so far about the warm-up of the tyres says it’s very easy to find performance. Plus the tyres are usable in different conditions – different circuits, hot temperatures, cold temperatures, different asphalts – the same tyres work quite everywhere, which is something the teams are not used to. This means they can work a lot on the bikes, because they don’t need to wait until 11 o’clock to start testing, they can start at 9 o’clock.

“We know the kind of product we are proposing, we know the strongest point of Pirelli tyres compared to our competitors, and we would like to keep pushing in these areas of strength we’ve already got.”

Most engineers agree that the 850s – with less downforce aero and no ride-height devices – will also make overtaking easier and thus create more crowd-pleasing battles.

“In my opinion, the bikes will make a difference, because the new rules and the new bikes will create the possibility to do things that probably now are quite difficult to do,” Barbier says. “Our tyres will change this as well.”

Currently no one knows more about the 850s than Barbier and his engineers, who have been working with all five manufacturers since last winter. They started with private tests, before the first group test at Misano in May, where all five brands gathered with their test riders: Aprilia’s Lorenzo Savadori, Ducati’s Nicolo Bulega, Honda’s Takaaki Nakagami, KTM’s Dani Pedrosa and Yamaha’s Augusto Fernandez.

“At Misano we met the summer, with 61 degrees on the asphalt,” Barbier adds. “This was the first time in history that we had all five manufacturers in the same place for two days with us.

“It was fun and really interesting from my side, because if you think about it, the bikes are all top secret! At Misano the manufacturers were all next to each other, three garages each, just putting up security screens to hide their bikes.