Moderators: cmlean, Ed, The Qualiflyer, The Heretic
says that if Ferrari were running on Michelin tyres they'd be "more competitive." 
Jim,Jim Watt wrote:Isn't it interesting, at least, that Jenson Button, whom one would assume knows SOMETHING about F1
I only mention this because, after Indy, so many experts were weighing in on the forums about how IMPOSSIBLE it would be for everyone to run on Bridgestones at Indy because the cars are so "engineered" to the tyres.
I remember, too, that BAR experienced a huge leap forward last year and F1 Magazine (whom, again, one would expect to know something about F1) said it was mostly attributable to the shift from Bridgestones to Michelins.
So it doesn't really look as though it would have been PHYSICALLY or even COMPETITIVELY impossible for everyone to have run on "safe" tyres at Indy. Just COMMERCIALLY impossible.
Sam Michael has admitted they are taking big risks in an attempt to get more competitive (from the Friday Press Conference)Byron Forbes wrote:Seeing Williams surge in the 2nd practice, I'm wondering if all their problems where actually morale related. Maybe all the aero changes made so much difference to the handling of the car that they simply need to get the setup suited to the car? If they are anywhere near the top after tomorrow then I guess that explains it - they have said that they are intensively chasing setup here atm.
The good news for Williams fans is that Sam Michael is confident they will have a 'race winning' engineWhat we basically did is for Magny-Cours we had quite a big upgrade to the car, which basically is the whole package, and obviously with the limited testing there is now it is a very risky strategy. We did two days testing at Jerez, before Magny-Cours, and saw a couple of problems but I think we underestimated how big those problems were before we took it to France. And in the meantime we have had quite an extensive programme in the wind tunnel this week. We have done a couple of things this afternoon which have started to give us some pretty good direction on where the problem is, whether we get to the bottom of it before the end of this weekend we don?t know yet, but we definitely started to make some improvements this afternoon. A lot of our strategy this year, because we started off behind, was to throw a lot of bits at the car and a lot of it is untested, and I would say out of the majority of the time, 90 percent of the time, it works. This time it has bitten us. But we will pick it all up and make sure we sort it as soon as we can
What we can say is that we are quite confident that in the future Williams F1 will have a competitive engine supply and one that we can challenge for wins, which is the target of our company
Full Renault team and driver quotesIt was a good lap today, and there was a really nice balance on the car. It is quite unexpected for me to be on the pole, to be honest, but the team did a great job overnight to improve the car, and it felt quick straight away this morning. That meant I went into qualifying with a good level of confidence, and I could really attack on the timed lap. Looking to tomorrow, I think we will see more similar strategies than in Magny-Cours, which will make it hard for people behind to make up positions, but it is still a long race here and anything can happen. It is hard for Kimi to suffer another penalty, but from our side, it doesn't change anything in the approach: we have done our maximum so far this weekend and got pole; we will do exactly the same tomorrow.
