“I’ve never seen something like this – it’s super-impressive. But the tyre is making us crash more, because the rear is pushing the front a lot. I love it, but the risk of a crash is always there.”

Riders often talk about the rear pushing the front when they dive into corners. But what does that actually mean, because it doesn’t sound right, does it?

When riders brake as they attack corners, the bike pitches forward, loading the front tyre. This makes the tyre carcass and rubber squish, which expands the contact patch and pushes the rubber into the asphalt. All this creates the extra front grip required.

However, when the rear tyre grips much more than the front the natural order of things is thrown into disarray. When the rider brakes the rear tyre carries too much load, so there’s not enough load thrown onto the front tyre, so the tyre doesn’t squish, so the contact patch doesn’t expand.

This means there’s not so much front grip, so there’s a greater chance of locking the front or losing the front.

That’s the rear pushing the front.

Can riders do anything about this, by modifying their riding technique? Not really, all they can do is enter corners slower, which won’t win them any races.

Look at Bastianini. He hasn’t crashed out of any races due to the rear pushing the front but he wasn’t faster than Bagnaia and Martin until his double victory at Silverstone, which is a faster, flowing track, where pushing the front is less of a worry.

Martin’s crew spent much of the break between the German GP, where he crashed out of the lead, and the British GP analysing data, trying to understand and fix the problem.

“There was a part on my bike for the last two seasons which was different to the rest of the Ducati riders,” said Martin on Friday at Silverstone. “We think it may be the cause of the crashes.”

So what was this part? Martin wouldn’t say. All he did say was that he had switched to the part used by Bagnaia, Bastianini and other Ducati riders, and that it made a difference in braking zones.

At Silverstone, Martin qualified off the front row for only the third time this season and in the sprint – usually his forte – he got beaten by Bastianini. Partly because he was still getting used to this new-to-him front-end part.

“The front change is a bit on limit – in the sprint I struggled to feel the front,” he added.

The GP24’s rear-push issue is worse in qualifying and sprints, for the obvious reason that the grippier rear tyres used in those outings push the front even more than the harder compounds used in full-length races.

Let Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaró (who qualified on pole at Silverstone, finished a fighting third in the sprint, then went backward to sixth in the main race) explain…

“When the Ducati guys use softer rear tyres they have a limit, because the rear pushes the front,” he said. “That’s why in qualifying we are close but when they have harder rear tyres [in the main race] they have no front locking into corners, so it’s difficult to fight against them.”

Despite the rear-pushing-the-front issue, the marriage of Ducati’s GP24 and Michelin’s 2024 rear slick gets stronger and stronger, as Gigi Dall’Igna and his engineers chip away at the problem, leaving their rivals, including Ducati GP23 riders, further behind.

GP24s have dominated most podiums this year and have monopolised the GP podium three times at the last four races.

Marc Márquez came within a few tenths of beating Bagnaia to the win at Jerez and Le Mans but hasn’t been in the victory fight since. Why?

“We have the opposite problem to the GP24 – we are missing rear grip in corner entry,” he explained.

This fits with what VR46 GP23 rider Marco Bezzecchi says – Bezzecchi no longer has the rear grip he enjoyed last year which helped him stop and turn the bike so well.

The difference between the GP24 and GP23 is so now big that Alex Márquez hopes Ducati won’t make another big jump forward going into next season, when he will have a GP24, while the older brother Marc, Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio will have GP25s.

“This is the first year we’ve seen a step like this from the old bike to the new one,” said Alex Márquez at Silverstone. “So we hope that Dall’Igna will take some holidays until the end of season, so Ducati don’t improve a lot with next year’s bike, so that next year we can be more equal like last year, when [Marco] Bezzecchi was able to win many races on a GP22.”

And yet, everything could change at Red Bull Ring this weekend.

The Austrian circuit is one of three MotoGP venues where Michelin uses a different construction rear slick, an older design created specifically to deal with massive temperature build-up in the centre of the tyre. This tyre is also used at Buriram, Thailand, and Mandalika, Indonesia.

Bikes need different set-ups to get the best out of this tyre, so it will be interesting to see if the GP24’s rivals can close the gap or not.