"We consciously favoured a cautious approach to the car's maiden race,” the programme manager continued. “That is to say a safe, reliable construction. Our objective was to run double stints and hopefully not come across any unpleasant surprises."
This 'safe' method enabled the Audi R10 to go on and win the race…
In the early part of the endurance season's opener, Michelin's engineers and developers were somewhat on their guards however, as none of the drivers had spent all that much time at the wheel, so the feedback of information was quite limited.
"We knew that after forty or so laps, which is equivalent to one and a half stints, we needed to tread carefully and manage our tyres," Biela said. "The final part of the second stints was rather delicate, but we made it, at a tough circuit like Sebring, and at the hottest moment of the day too! Bravo, Michelin!"
Once the 'safety' phase had been mastered, the next step of the tyre's development was to work on consistency with the aim of triple stinting at Le Mans – a test at Le Castellet leaving the team optimistic that that will be possible. From there, the final phase of the short term development was focused on performance.
“This involved working on the compound and on the front/rear balance,” Bonardel said. “The Audi R10 qualified on pole position at Sebring so we are not unduly concerned regarding Le Mans. The lion's share of our work will in fact begin after Le Mans as we look ahead to 2006 and 2007. Then we will take a fresh look at consistency, etc. We are not quite so serene as far as the qualifying and rain tyres go however. It is always difficult to work on those. The Audi R10 has run very little in the wet to date."
While Michelin have worked hard on getting the product right for the R10, Audi aren’t the only team likely to benefit from the extensive work that has been going on ahead of the race, with the wider diameter front tyres developed for the new Audi R10 having effectively been made available to Michelin's other LMP1 partners.
