By Phil Huff
June 19 2005

BAR Honda's technical director Geoffrey Willis has declared that the three options put to the Michelin shod teams at Indianapolis are not acceptable. The first option, running a Barcelona specification tyre Michelin flew in overnight, leads to a number of issues. "The Barcelona tyre is not an option," says Willis, "because we do not know how it would behave here."

Should any team run the optional tyre, they almost certainly face exclusion from the race results for changing tyre specification after qualifying.

"Changing tyres is also not feasible because six extra stops would be a big penalty," said Willis about option two - changing the risky tyre every ten laps as per Michelin's instructions. The teams would need to prove to the FIA that the changed tyre was dangerous in order to escape any penalty.

The final option for the teams is to slow down for the final banked turn. "Going slow is unlikely," adds Willis, "as there are six Michelin cars racing for a podium and the difference is tenths per lap."

At BAR-Talk.com we feel that there are occasions where the safety of the competitors and, more importantly, the paying public, should come before a few tenths of a second advantage over an opponent. The time has come for those affected to look at the bigger picture and agree to run according to the rules, sacrificing their own performance if necessary.