Michelin to fight back in Belgium

Michelin has no previous experience of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit except for two days running with F1 newcomer Toyota earlier this month. Bridgestone accused its French rival of taking an unfair advantage, by using data from the test to prepare for this weekend's race.

However, Michelin will supply its teams with a completely new construction in Belgium, which was tested for the first time last week at Silverstone and Barcelona.

"At Spa, we are dealing with very quick corners and we have worked on tyres that support high lateral loads at very high speeds," said Michelin's F1 project manager Pascal Vasselon. "What is more, we will use a new tyre construction that our teams favoured in the most recent round of tests."

Michelin users struggled in Hungary with number one team Williams unable to take the fight to the Bridgestone-shod outfits of Ferrari and McLaren.

"The Hungarian GP was a fairly trying event for us," said Michelin motorsport director Pierre Dupasquier. "Nothing occurred to alter the status quo we witnessed during qualifying."

Williams' Ralf Schumacher qualified fourth as the highest Michelin runner and finished the race in the same position, while team mate Juan Pablo Montoya came home eighth.

While Michelin has a new tyre construction for Spa, the Clermont-Ferrand-based company's compound choice is a difficult one, due to the Ardennes region's famous changing weather.

"As far as compounds are concerned," continued Vasselon, "we will use tyres that fit more or less into the middle of our range. We have tried to take the changeable weather into account and our primary tyres are quite different from our option tyres, to allow for possible temperature variations."