BAR, Red Bull Wait on Tyre Decision

Amid major safety concerns about the long-term durability of Michelin's tyres following Ralf Schumacher's practice crash, the French tyre maker has requested that it be allowed to draft in a new specification of tyres for the races to ensure that there is no repeat.

But with Renault having said on Saturday morning that they will pull out of the Indianapolis event if Michelin does not get permission to bring in the new tyres, two of their rivals have suggested that they are actually happy to continue with the current rubber.

BAR boss Nick Fry said: "At the moment we are going quite nicely on the tyres we have. We have no evidence that we have a problem but we are obviously taking advice from Michelin.

"The technical directors are meeting with Michelin to decide what to do. We are qualifying on these tyres, we are quite happy with that in that we ran on them this morning and then we will see what happens tomorrow."

Fry admitted that he would actually be more concerned about running with new untried tyres than in carrying on with the current rubber.

"We did a lot of laps yesterday on these tyres and we are quite happy with these tyres," he said.

"Obviously, if they change tyres for the race then that would be a bit of a concern because firstly we will not have driven on them until the first lap of the race and, secondly, at the moment we don't know why there was a problem on the Toyota with these tyres.

"So whether the new tyres would actually fix the problem we would have to take advice from Michelin."

Red Bull Racing sporting director Christian Horner said it was too early for him to make a call on pulling his team out of the race if Michelin cannot get permission to run the new tyres.

"We will take a calculated risk on the information we have," he said. "At the end of the day we are here to go racing and there is always risk involved in motorsport, it is just a case of how big a risk."

When asked to comment on Renault boss Flavio Briatore's threat to pull out of the race if Michelin cannot run the new tyres, Horner said: "I don't have enough information to make that decision at the moment.

"We will only make that decision after we know all the facts and the likelihood of a tyre change tomorrow."