Michelin: No Excuses this Year

Michelin must be able to deliver in their second Formula One season, heads of the French company said today, ahead of the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, at Melbourne.

"We must do better, much better," said Michelin competition director Pierre Dupasquier. "We no longer have the excuse of not knowing the circuits and we are working with teams whose abilities are well established. Henceforth the challenge is to prove that Michelin can deliver the results everyone expects in the wake of last season's successes."

Michelin will be supplying six of the eleven teams this season, including front runners Williams and McLaren. The tyre manufacturer concentrated throughout the winter on rubber, grooves and wet weather advancements, stating they have now made significant improvements.

"Like our partners we have been limited by the regulations in the amount of testing we have been able to do and so haven't been able to evaluate all our new ideas," said Michelin's project director Pascal Vasselon. "Initial tests indicate that some developments, on which we have been focusing particularly hard, have opened up promising new research possibilities for the future.

"We have made notable gains with our wet-weather and intermediate tyres. All our partners are agreed that we have moved forward, but we won't know if we have done enough to be truly competitive until we get to the first Grand Prix."

Getting ready for Melbourne, Vasselon added: "We know that this track changes a lot as the weekend wears on. The experience we gained last year leads us to believe that the best race strategy is to do a very long opening stint. We will bring along new tyres that suit such tactics, but they won't feature all the latest developments we have been working on during the winter break."