GreenBkk.com WRC | Shorrock praises Michelin engineers

Shorrock praises Michelin engineers

Michelin's motorsport director Nick Shorrock has praised his team for producing a competitive and durable tyre for this year's World Rally Championship.

The first three rounds of the WRC had featured a high number of punctures from the French firm, but Michelin’s decision to toughen up the construction of the Latitude Cross gravel tyre delivered strong results on the Jordan Rally earlier this month, when none of the leading drivers suffered from punctures.

Nick Shorrock

"We are satisfied that the teams are not finding too much difference on the handling side of the tyre and that’s important,"

Shorrock said: “Ford and Citroen - our major teams - have been positive about the changes. We now have a tyre which is demonstrating itself to be more robust and perhaps not losing as much as we might have imagined on the performance side. What we’ve tried to do is produce a tyre which gives performance and robustness and, probably, the tyre we were using before here was a little bit too much in performance. We’ve come back from that and what we have seen in Jordan confirms what we saw in the test before the event.”

The drivers were all quick to praise the new product, with Jordan winner Sebastien Ogier saying: “The tyres worked, they were not so different from before for the grip, but they are stronger. I was happy with them.”

Shorrock continued: “We are satisfied that the teams are not finding too much difference on the handling side of the tyre and that’s important, it’s giving the drivers the same feedback from the road. We’re pleased, I’m very pleased and a big recognition to our engineers who have worked so hard - they have come up trumps yet again.”

Shorrock admitted there would have been more punctures with the previous tyre. “I saw some enormous anomalies on the tyres in Jordan,” he said. “On one tyre, the sidewall was ripped - that would have been a blow-out on the previous [tyre], but this one remained in place. Like I said, in the tests, we ran the tyres in some fairly extreme conditions with zero pressure and they performed.”

Credit: World Rally Championship (www.wrc.com)