Technical Focus: Preparing for Season's End

By Michelin Sport
October 8 2005

Michelin and their seven partner teams prepare for the challenging figure-eight course at Suzuka. It will be an important home race for two of the teams; BAR Honda and Toyota.

Pierre Dupasquier, Michelin Motorsport Director:

"The season is ending with a spectacular flourish, at a series of circuits drivers really enjoy. They include Spa, Monza, Interlagos, Shanghai... and Suzuka, which demands great finesse yet is also one of the most demanding tracks on the calendar. It poses a real headache for aerodynamicists, who have to work out a set-up that offers the best compromise for high- and low-speed corners plus some long straights. One of Suzuka's key features is a succession of sweeping corners, where any loss of rhythm can be very costly in terms of lap time."

"From a tyre perspective, Suzuka has one unique- and significant - characteristic. It is the only circuit on the calendar with a figure-of-eight layout, which provides an equal balance of left- and right-hand corners. That creates an even load across the tread and makes the circuit less critical than you might imagine in terms of tyre wear. The important thing is to focus on transverse loads at high speeds rather that straight-line traction."

"There is one other thing to bear in mind: the track tends to evolve significantly during the course of the weekend, which helps to ease the load on tyres by Sunday afternoon. Having prepared for Suzuka and considered its high-speed nature and relatively abrasive surface, we have selected compounds from the medium-hard sector of our range."

Driver perspective: Takuma Sato, B·A·R-Honda:

"The 2005 regulations have made it vital to get the chassis set-up right at every circuit - not just Suzuka. If the car lacks balance, it will slide around and that accelerates the rate of tyre wear. Given that we only have one set to last a full race distance, this is clearly something we have to avoid."

"Suzuka has some very fast, challenging corners- a bit like Silverstone - but during recent tests we have evaluated some Michelin tyre compounds that combined good high-speed grip with excellent durability, so I think we'll have a strong package."