By Michelin Sport
July 1 2006

Giancarlo Fisichella was the pick of the Michelin drivers during qualifying for tomorrow's United States Grand Prix. The Italian lapped in 1:11.920 during the decisive part of the session to claim third place on the grid. It is only the third time this season that Michelin has not taken pole position for a Formula One race, but seven drivers from four partner teams have secured a place in the top 10. Rubens Barrichello was fourth ahead of world championship leader Fernando Alonso, Jacques Villeneuve, Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen and Nick Heidfeld.

Giancarlo Fisichella and Nick Heidfeld were the quickest Michelin drivers during this morning's final free practice.

There were some high-profile casualties during the first stage of today's qualifying knockout: David Coulthard, Nico Rosberg and Jarno Trulli all failed to make the cut, as did Takuma Sato, Vitantonio Liuzzi and Franck Montagny.

Juan Pablo Montoya, Mark Webber, Scott Speed, Christijan Albers, Tiago Monteiro and Christian Klien were eliminated during the second stage of qualifying.

Nick Heidfeld made it through to the final qualifying shoot-out but failed to record a representative lap time after a technical problem forced him to pull off the track.

Michael Schumacher has qualified on pole position for the 67th time in his F1 career.

Nick Shorrock
Formula One Director
Michelin

"That was a fairly intense qualifying session, with a kind of race within a race at the start of the decisive final run.

"Between them, our partner teams have chosen three different products for tomorrow's race – one 'prime' and two 'options' – and all have performed very well in terms of long-run consistency.

"Some partners picked up a degree of understeer today and we have yet to generate the kind of ultimate performance we saw during testing, but we are expecting even hotter weather for tomorrow's race and that might well provide an optimum operating platform for our tyres."