12/09/2005
NEWS STORY
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Following a recent item on Pitpass referring to the incidents involving both WilliamsF1s in Turkey, and then another that affected both McLarens at Monza, Michelin wasted no time in contacting us.
As the cars raced at Spa Francorchamps, on a weekend when the French tyre manufacturer proved it can win in all conditions, Nick Shorrock, director of Michelin F1 activities, spoke to Chris Balfe.
"When you take the incidents at Istanbul, then again at Monza, once the race was over we were able to sit down and look at the incidents with our partners, be it WilliamsF1 or McLaren.
"The first thing we were able to identify is that in each case, in other words in each race, there wasn't a specific tyre problem, but the incidents that occurred in very localised places and only on a given type of car. That is why I said in Istanbul, and I said it again when I was asked at Monza, that it wasn't easy, or indeed reasonable, to draw a very quick conclusion, it needed us to take some time to work with our partners to understand what had happened and why it had happened.
"That's what we've done in both cases. I think, in the case of the WilliamsF1, it was very clear that following the work done by the team it has been identified that this was a particular problem with their car, and by all accounts this was a set-up problem."
Asked if this was the work carried out at Monza during the test that preceded the Grand Prix, Shorrock replied: "Correct, absolutely. They identified a particular geometrical problem and have subsequently worked on that.
"With regards Monza, McLaren came to us very, very quickly, on race day itself. In fact it was Ron Dennis that spoke to me - he said that McLaren felt it had some sort of set-up problem.
"This was after the race," he reveals. "It was an emotional moment, his team had just won and Ron was on his way back from the podium. He came up to me and thanked me for the service that Michelin had delivered, and then said 'we think we've got a car set-up problem that we need to work on'. And that is exactly what we've been doing.
"All incidents are investigated very, very thoroughly, even more so following our experience at Indianapolis. We have fuller and fuller technical dossiers which are giving us more and more information, and are comforting us in our reflections on why we've had these incidents.
"With regards Indianapolis," he continues, "we've tried to understand and recreate the mechanism, and we're now capable of doing that. That's understanding and recreating the mechanism of failure.
"Fairly quickly after Indianapolis we believed that we'd underestimated the type of tyre we needed to take to that circuit, and since then we have set about trying to ensure that our products are correct for each circuit by identifying how the cars operate on given circuits, what are the critical points around the circuit - whether it be straights or bends - and ensuring that we have a safe product in every instance.
"The products that we use every race weekend don't differ in safety characteristics, they are absolutely safe to race on, whether it be the prime or the option tyre, and we will continue to try and reinforce that aspect of our business."