Michelin buoyed by Mugello one-two

Prior to Mugello, all but one of this season's GPs had been won by Bridgestone-shod bikes, and Valentino Rossi had urged Michelin to improve.

But in Italy Rossi and Dani Pedrosa were able to pull away from the Bridgestone runners and dominate the second half of the race.

"That is a fantastic result for us," said Weber. "The race wasn't easy because Valentino and Dani weren't up front at the start but they were able to fight their way to the front and then break away from their rivals.

"We were a little worried about the Ducati's top speed here but Valentino and Dani had better performance through the corners to overcome that straight-line disadvantage.

"Valentino's win confirms that we are working in the right direction with our new rear casing. He used a new rear that he tested at Le Mans after the French GP.

"Dani used a softer casing today, according to his preference, but we will talk to him to get his feedback to see if he wants to use something different next time. Each of our riders needs their own solution to suit their riding styles and machine character."

Bridgestone's general manager of motorcycle tyre development Atsushi Tomura believed that Bridgestone had been compromised by the changeable weather that affected practice.

"This weekend has really been conditioned by the unsettled weather conditions that reduced the amount of running we had in full dry conditions, but I think we can be pleased with the consistency of our tyres this afternoon," said Tomura.

"We perhaps missed a bit of performance compared to the two leading riders in the middle stages of the race, but we demonstrated that our range of medium compounds were capable of challenging for the podium in Mugello, as shown by Alex Barros's third place result."

But Weber felt that Michelin would also have found more performance had practice remained dry.

"It has been a difficult weekend, with so much rain during practice that prevented us from trying all the slick solutions that we would have liked to test, but in the end we had a good race performance," he said.

"Anyway, Dani was fastest in dry practice, so we were quite confident for today.

"Today's win is a big boost for us, now we will keep thinking hard and working hard to bring the best tyre solutions to Barcelona next weekend."