By Michelin Sport
August 5 2006

Kimi Raikkonen posted fastest lap on the opening day of the Hungarian Grand Prix, 13th round of this season's Formula One world championship. Conditions in Budapest are unusually cool for the time of year – but the Finn showed his customary flair when lapping the labyrinthine, 2.722-mile circuit in 1:21.624 during this morning's first free practice session.

Seven Michelin drivers from four partner teams featured in today's cumulative top 10. World championship leader Fernando Alonso was third, ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella, Anthony Davidson, Pedro de la Rosa, Robert Doornbos and Rubens Barrichello.

Nick Shorrock
Formula One Director
Michelin

"The conditions are quite extraordinary. It is much cooler than we are used to at this time of the year in Budapest and the tyres we have brought were obviously designed with higher temperatures in mind. The forecasts suggest it will stay like this, so the challenge is to find a way to extract the best possible performance from our tyres in a completely unexpected set of circumstances.

"The cooler conditions have prompted a number of tyre-graining issues, particularly on the left front, but there are several things we can do to combat this, including tyre pressure and camber angle adjustments. The combined efforts of our partners and engineers seem to have been very effective so far.

"Following analysis of last weekend's German GP result we gave our partners the opportunity to revise their tyre choices for Hungary. A number of them did this and the end result is that we have a number of different products available this weekend – albeit not the ones we had provisionally selected pre-Hockenheim. That's a testament to our manufacturing division's ability to respond to our partners' needs in double-quick time."