Michelin: no problems with the tyres

The French tyre manufacturer had made clear that it was approaching this weekend with an aggressive strategy, despite the problems that forced its teams to withdraw from last year's United States Grand Prix before the start.

Having been confident enough to not bring any extra conservative options as a fall back in case of unexpected problems, Michelin's F1 director Nick Shorrock has given his tyres the all clear.

When asked whether the tyres were performing as expected, especially through Turn 13, he told autosport.com: "Absolutely. We go through typical validation procedures at every race, and there is nothing to suggest that there are any problems. This is only in keeping with all the tests that we have done up until now."

Shorrock said that Michelin had introduced no extra tests on its tyres for this weekend, despite the unique problems posed by the flat-out banked Turn 13.

"Every race is prepared in exactly the same way," he said. "We have specific batches that are tested beforehand, before our partners get their hands on it, and everything has gone as expected."

Michelin's all clear on tyres is in marked contrast to the situation 12 months ago, when problems for Toyota's Ricardo Zonta and Ralf Schumacher in practice indicated the start of their nightmare weekend.

"Unfortunately this time last year, very early in the second session, Ricardo Zonta and Ralf had that incident. And by that time in the second session we were looking at various different problems at different teams."

Speaking about Michelin's aggressive approach to this weekend, Shorrock said: "We don't have a choice. Obviously we have done all the right preparation in terms of the product for 2006.

"Our partners have made it very clear, they want to be here to race for sure but they want to be competitive, whatever their objectives are - whether it is BMW fighting for points or Renault maintaining their lead.

"So we don't have an opportunity to be conservative, we have to give them the correct products."