By Ian Lockwood
March 17 2006

The second race of the season takes place in something of a Formula One hotspot. It will be a very demanding weekend for tyre manufacturers. Several long straights put quite a strain on rear tyres, but sustained ambient heat is the biggest factor.

Nick Shorrock, Formula One director, Michelin

“The second race of the season takes place in something of a Formula One hotspot. It will be a very demanding weekend for tyre manufacturers. Several long straights put quite a strain on rear tyres, but sustained ambient heat is the biggest factor. We have done a lot of preparatory work, though, and obtained encouraging results during a pre-season test in hot conditions at the Bahrain International Circuit, where we won last weekend’s opening race. We expect things to be much warmer in Malaysia and will turn to slightly more rigid tyre constructions. Given our winning start to the season, I’m confident we will perform very strongly once again.”


"Conditions were cooler than we anticipated during the first free practice session, which caused softer compounds to grain a little, but that problem went away this afternoon when the heat returned to its customary ferocity"

"As we saw in Bahrain, the level of competition promises to be extremely high this season and todays closely matched times reflect as much. Our partners have completed a number of useful long runs, however, and that has given us an excellent platformfor the balance of the weekend. We have brought seven different types of tyre to Sepang and, on the basis of what we have seen so far, I expect a number of them to be used in Sunday's race