For Pierre Dupasquier, Michelin Motorsport Director, had no regrets about the tyre strategy that they adopted. He responded to various questions.

Michelin cars were quickest on Friday and took pole position yesterday, but things didn’t pan out quite so well in the race. Why?

 “We aren’t sure yet – but given the Ferraris’ race pace I am beginning to wonder whether they qualified with a whole load of fuel on board or something… After seeing their performance today I am surprised they didn’t lap several seconds faster in qualifying. It is not unusual for them to be ultra-quick in the race, of course, but Ferrari is definitely the factor that makes the difference at the moment. Despite losing two front-running cars in an unfortunate accident we had three cars in the top six. The next best finisher on the same tyres as the Ferraris was more than a lap behind them. That tells you something.”

You tackled this race in an ambitious way with two relatively soft tyre compounds. Any regrets?

“No. You have to be aggressive if you want to win in Formula One and we have learned many valuable lessons this weekend – not least where we need to set our goals in future. Our tyres gave extremely high performance, but it is clear that trying to run a race on a one-stop strategy was a marginal exercise.”

How would you sum up Michelin’s weekend?

“We did lots of work on Friday and analysed all the results, but although things looked good for the first couple of days we have seen once again that you never know the true picture until the race comes around on Sunday. We weren’t competitive enough today, when it mattered, and Ferrari had an undeniable margin of superiority.”

Have you drawn any conclusions about the relative performance of your primary (A) and option (B) tyres?

“Not yet. Both kinds of tyre were used today, but we haven’t seen any obvious pattern emerging. We have plenty of data to study, not least because some teams opted to run primary tyres on one car and options on the other. The Williams-BMWs raced on different compounds, for instance.”

Next stop, Silverstone. Any predictions?

“Yes – we’ll take a less radical approach. We are consistently able to qualify at the front but the best solution could be to qualify on the second row and win the race !