The hearing of the teams took place this morning. They were represented by counsel, with one exception, which was Red Bull. As you will recall, there were five charges against the teams.

The first of these was failing to ensure they were in possession of suitable tyres for the 2005 United States Grand Prix, and they were found guilty of that, but with strongly mitigating circumstances.

The second thing was they were accused of wrongfully refusing to allow their cars to start the race, and they were found guilty of that on the grounds that they could have used the pitlane, it would have been very slow but they could do that.

The third charge was refusing to race subject to a speed restriction, and they were found not guilty because there was no clear plan in place as to how that would be done. They were also found not guilty of combining to make a demonstration because they satisfied the World Council that it was genuinely their intention to race when they went out of the pits and onto the starting grid, and finally they were found not guilty of failing to inform the stewards for exactly the same reason, that they did intend to race. So guilty on two and not guilty on three of the charges.

The World Motor Sport Council decided to adjourn discussion of any penalty to an extraordinary meeting of the World Motor Sport Council on September 14, 2005, when it will also examine what steps have been taken by the seven Michelin teams and/or their tyre supplier to compensate the Formula One fans and repair the damage to the reputation of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and to the image of Formula One. Also what steps have been taken by the Michelin teams to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. Those two questions will be examined in September and depending on where we have got to on those two points will make the final decision on a penalty, if a penalty is imposed by the World Council.

The difficulty that we have is that the FIA has no direct relationship with the Michelin tyre. We have no contractual relationship with them, we are therefore not in a position to impose a penalty on Michelin. Had we been in a position to do that, they would have been summoned to the World Council and, judging from what we heard from the teams, they would have found themselves in a very difficult position.

You have seen the various exchanges of correspondence, you have seen the letter that was sent this morning to Mr. Edouard Michelin and you will have seen how they said in their letters that they had no knowledge of the forces on their tyres. And if I were not able to show that in a Michelin letter then you would think that I had invented it, because it is an extraordinary statement for them to make. They also said that they could not guarantee their tyres wouldn't burst if used under extreme conditions and that is of course exactly what Formula One is. I think it doesn't need me to launch into an attack on Michelin after what we have seen of them and what they can do and their responses over the last ten days. The facts speak for themselves. It is a disastrous performance and that company should be deeply ashamed. I don't intend to go into the detail but I certainly can if asked to do so.

So that is what has been decided.

Questions From The Floor

Was it a decision taken by all the members of the World Council?
Max Mosley: This decision was unanimous for the World Council. Of course, not every member of the World Council could participate in the discussion because, for example, Jean Todt, of Ferrari, who is a member of the World Council, absented himself before we started the discussion on the Indianapolis speedway. Equally Nasir Hussain was the chief steward at Indianapolis, so he played no part, and then Bernie Ecclestone played a very restricted part because he, too, was also involved. Otherwise everyone was there and it was unanimous.

Isn't Michelin honourable to decide for safety and not to race?
MM: Michelin's job at Indianapolis was to turn up with a racing tyre. That inevitably is something on the limit that may not work on all the cars, but to they also have to turn up with a second tyre, which is allowed by the regulations, that would be completely reliable in all circumstances. They didn't do that, by their own admission they turned up with two tyres with the same construction but with different compounds. That meant that if there was a problem with the construction, which there turned out to be, they would find themselves in Indianapolis with no usable tyres.

They then flew in a tyre from France, the so-called Barcelona tyre, but that had the same construction as well and showed the same problem in testing. So they completely failed to take the most basic precaution, which is to make sure they had a safety net. And in the circumstances to do anything other than race down the pitlane would have been dangerous.

Arguably, by all of their own admissions, even the chicane would have been questionable because they were asking for a chicane at the same time that they said they couldn't find the root cause of the problem.

If they didn't know what was a problem, how did they know that the chicane would be safe? Also, one of the failures was in turn five, and that is another high-speed corner. One of the two Toyota failures was in turn five, we could have had other failures in turn five and they themselves admitted that this was a possibility. So on every count, what they have done is completely extraordinary and it really does require explanation. And for them to sit there and say ‘for reasons of safety we told the drivers not to race' completely begs the question that avoids the whole discussion, which is why did they turn up there with no proper tyres?