Michelin tyre problems dominate US GP

The story dominating the running of the United States Grand Prix is that of the safety concerns that those teams supplied with Michelin tyres have had since failures of the brands tyres during Friday practice, including a major crash involving Toyota's Ralf Schumacher.

This has lead to confusion as to what the options are if Michelin advises its teams that the tyres are unsafe to use in the race. Michelin has been examining the tyres in order to try and determine the cause of the tyre failures.

"We've got twenty guys around the table in Clermont-Ferrand,'' said Pierre Dupasquier, Michelin Motorsport head.

Michelin even went to the unusual position of advising the teams hat they should run their cars with the tyres in a particular configuration. This would see only a small number of drivers take to the track on Saturday morning as the teams worked to make the changes. But the safety concerns have put the teams, Michelin, and the FIA in a position where they have to come up with a resolution which will allow the race to go on with a full grid.

Renault have even been reported as saying that they will withdraw their cars from the race unless their safety concerns can be addressed. Renault's Fernando Alonso said: ''If Michelin say it's not safe, 'then I think the drivers would not agree to race.''

Michelin is currently flying in an batch of Barcelona specification tyres which will arrive Sunday morning, but the FIA has to give approval for the teams to use them, something that Bridgestone supplied teams would not be happy with. The regulations say that the teams must select their race tyres on Saturday. Would this be setting a precedent that teams could use at any race where their tyres were found to be not suitable?

Ferrari's Ross Brawn said: "It is important not to set a precedent, otherwise we would be in a situation of people regularly bringing tyres that were too soft for qualifying and then re-evaluating the position on Saturday night, which is obviously not what was intended."

But the position taken by Renault may not be accepted by all the teams. Teams such as WilliamsF1 have not had problems with their tyres this weekend and would see withdrawing from the race as not an option.

WilliamsF1 Technical Director Sam Michael, in response to a question as to whether all Michelin supplied teams would withdraw from the race said: "Not necessarily. No, I don't think it is necessarily a given that all Michelin teams will follow the same route.

"By tomorrow (Sunday) they will have analysed these tyres from other factors and perhaps it might give us some correlation that some cars are damaging tyres more than others.

"We have had no failures, running yesterday on low pressures, high pressures, running this morning as well with low fuel and high fuel, and we still haven't had any failures.

"So at the moment the decision as to whether we race Indy tyres or we race a new tyre that Michelin is flying out here tonight won't be taken until tomorrow morning."

Michael added: "The most important thing is the analysis of the tyres we used this morning at higher pressures. If there is a fault with any of them it means that the pressure won't solve the problem.

"If we found something that conclusively showed the Indy tyres had a fault that could occur on any car, then clearly that would rule that tyre out."

There is also the issue of whether or not new tyres from Michelin would also have problems as the teams would have to run with them without any prior time on the track.

Another option suggested in order to try and reduce the load on the tyres was to have the drivers run through the banked Turn 13 at a "yellow flag" speed. How this would be monitored is another issue in itself.

Could we have the sight of a reduced grid with the Bridgestone runners and a few Michelin supplied drivers? Whatever the outcome the pressure is on to try and have a full grid of cars and avoid a very public fiasco.