Newsgroup: it.sport.formula1.moderato
Titolo: [ENG] A secret meeting

Source: 
grandprix.com
http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns11818.html
There was a meeting yesterday at McLaren headquarters in Woking to try
to sort out the current tyre crisis in Formula 1. The meeting involved
the FIA technical delegate Charlie Whiting, Ron Dennis and Martin
Whitmarsh of McLaren and Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head from
Williams.
The teams are believed to have been discussing what will happen at Monza
this weekend with the tyres because the FIA's decision to measure the
tyres before and after the race has led to potential problems with the
tread width of the Michelin front tyres.
Michelin has been working flat out to sort out the situation but the
tyres produced for the recent Monza test have made the cars much more
difficult to drive and there are hints that the problem still exists. The
teams say that Michelin needs more time to prepare itself properly for
the new rule interpretation, which was decided upon after the recent
Hungarian GP where Ferrari, apparently acting on behalf of Bridgestone,
complained to the FIA. The regulation in question is Article 77c of the
2003 Sporting Regulations which states that "Each front dry-weather tyre,
when new, must incorporate 4 grooves which are: arranged symmetrically
about the centre of the tyre tread; at least 14mm wide at the contact
surface and which taper uniformly to a minimum of 10mm at the lower
surface; at least 2.5mm deep across the whole lower surface; 50mm (+/-
1.0mm) between centres. Furthermore, the tread width of the front tyres
must not exceed 270mm."
Michelin interpreted this to mean that tyres must have a tread width of
270mm when new and, as there is no mention in the regulation of how wide
they must be at the end of the race, they developed a clever system by
which the tyres were able to "grow" slightly during the race. When
writing the rule, the FIA appears to have not considered the possibility
that tyres could do this.
While the teams involved are not happy about the sudden change in the
rules there is a grudging acceptance that they will change if forced to
do so but they argue that that it is vital that they are given enough
time so as not to be completely uncompetitive as a result of the new
interpretation.
The new tyres tried last week at Monza were an attempt to balance the
demands on Michelin but it seems that no matter how the suspensions were
set-up the tyres performed as they were designed to do.
The teams are worried that they could lose the World Championship as a
result of the change in interpretation and that this will reflect badly
on the sport. As a result the FIA is running the risk of being seen to be
helping Ferrari. This makes no sense as the FIA is well aware that
Ferrari domination in recent years has harmed the sport considerably
because races had become far too predictable.
The teams say that according to the rules the Michelin tyres were clever
rather than being illegal and that all they were trying to do was to find
a competitive edge within the regulations as they were written.
Copyright 1988-2003, Inside F1, Inc.
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 set-up the tyres performed as they were designed to do.
Forse hanno provato a non far allargare il battistrada con determinati
setup delle sospensioni ma non ci sono riusciti perchè "the tyres
performed as they were designed to do".
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Ciao, Muttley
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