Michelin admits US GP errors, plans changes.

The US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca looked like it might turn into a total disaster for Michelin, after the French manufacturer badly misjudged the track conditions and handed its teams overly hard tyres - prompting the shocking sight of some intermediates being used on a dry track in the cool morning practice sessions.

Race start, US MotoGP 2008
Race start, US MotoGP 2008
© Gold and Goose

The US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca looked like it might turn into a total disaster for Michelin, after the French manufacturer badly misjudged the track conditions and handed its teams overly hard tyres - prompting the shocking sight of some intermediates being used on a dry track in the cool morning practice sessions.

Whilst qualifying rubber helped salvage reasonable grid positions, most riders had only one or two competitive tyres to work with all weekend and - although the race wasn't the disaster it might have been - Michelin riders managed only fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth in a Bridgestone dominated top ten.

Some of the Michelin riders had been struggling to contain their frustration - Colin Edwards pretended to strangle his technician on camera - and Michelin competitions director Frederic Henry-Biabaud admitted they had made a mistake.

"Looking at today's result we can say that we weren't ambitious enough because of what happened last year at this track," said Henry-Biabaud. "We didn't want the same problem this time, so we recommended a very conservative direction to our teams. It was a mistake from which we have learned."

"The starting point of our difficulties this weekend was the problems we had last year, when the track was more aggressive and the track temperature higher than expected, which gave us wear problems," confirmed Jean-Philippe Weber, Michelin's director of motorcycle racing. "This year the track was much less aggressive. Also, the track temperature was lower than last year, but in fact not so bad because we saw the high 40s on Friday.

"Based on last year's situation we were too conservative, with too-hard constructions and compounds which gave reduced performance. Our riders had only a limited supply of tyres they could use for the race, so they had to work with harder tyres during practice. It's been a really difficult weekend because our approach was far too conservative," he continued.

"From now on we have to share more our tyre strategy and allocation strategy with the teams. For example, Colin Edwards requested some fronts for this race which he had already used this year at less demanding tracks. He could have used those tyres here, so he was right.

"On a positive note, it was great to see Andrea [Dovizioso] fighting with Nicky [Hayden] for fourth, that was a very impressive result for a Laguna Seca newcomer and showed his impressive strengths. Randy [de Puniet] also rode a good race. He used an even harder rear tyre than the others and he found a good machine set-up. But obviously we aren't happy with our riders' lap times here, because we didn't give them enough grip."

The best Michelin race lap was a 1min 22.915secs by Hayden, which was 1.427secs slower than Casey Stoner.

Michelin now plans an aggressive development programme before the next MotoGP event in the Czech Republic on August 15-17.

"Over the next three weeks we will therefore work in two directions," said Henry-Biabaud. "First, we will organise tests at several tracks. Second, we will continue developing some new solutions that we already have under development and which we will recommend to our teams for the next races, representing a more ambitious direction.

"We will also evolve the way we recommend tyre solutions to our teams, because this way we can deliver better performance. The season is far from over and we look forward to the last seven races after some very positive races already this year.

"Dani [Pedrosa] was leading the championship going into last weekend's German GP where he also led the race. It was very sad that he got hurt when he fell, but he made the correct decision not to race here, considering his injuries.

"It's also a great shame that Jorge Lorenzo has suffered some injuries after his fantastic start to the season. Now we have to keep working hard, in fact we have to work even harder. We will certainly do everything we can to deliver more performance to our teams," he insisted.

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