Michelin Battling “Capacity of Production” Challenges

GTE-Am cars are running on an older tire specification at the 6 Hours of Fuji this weekend as Michelin seeks to address “capacity of production” issues, according to the French supplier’s endurance racing manager.

Michelin requested to engage its 2021 GTE-Am tires at this weekend’s FIA World Endurance Championship round due to “significant perturbation” at its production plants.

It is the second time this season that Michelin has called on the 2021-spec rubber, after doing so for the 1000 Miles of Sebring due to raw material supply issues related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

New tire specs were introduced this year for the Ferrari 488 GTE Evo, the Porsche 911 RSR-19 and the Chevrolet Corvette C8.R, which race in the development-focused GTE-Pro class. The Aston Martin Vantage GTEs in the Am category run on older-spec tires.

“In March, just after the [Ukraine] conflict started, we had a rupture with the suppliers for carbon black, all the metal parts and so on,” Pierre Alves told Sportscar365.

“This stopped because they closed the border from Russia and Ukraine. But we found other sources. Since April we don’t have an issue with raw materials. The issue is the capacity of production.

“The main difficulty is that the machines are at full capacity because we have big demand, especially from Hypercar. The machines are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We are producing tires to be able to supply WEC and IMSA next season. WEC and big championships are our priority.”

The raw material supply issues prompted Michelin to approach Sebring with a stock of older GTE-Am tires that it initially allocated to last season’s canceled 6 Hours of Fuji.

Michelin sorted the problem by sourcing new suppliers, which enabled it to provide the GTE-Am class with the latest tire at Spa, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Monza.

However, Alves explained that production limitations due to a high general demand for racing and testing meant that Michelin restricted the 2022 GTE-Am product to competition only, with teams forced to use older tires for testing.

A similar approach was taken by Michelin’s North American arm, which announced in May that it would be prioritizing tires for sanctioned IMSA events.

“At one stage, we said that would not be able to answer positively to everyone,” said Alves. “We need to make sure that all the major series have the tires to race.

“We had enough tires to do Monza and we were depending on the weather conditions at Le Mans and Monza, to have enough tires [for Fuji].

“At Le Mans, we had a week of dry weather and very few cars withdrew from the race.

“After Le Mans, our stock was very low. That’s why we could not use the leftovers from Le Mans to do Fuji. We waited for Monza, to see if it was a rainy weekend.

“We would then have enough to bring Monza [slick] tires to Fuji by air shipment. But Monza was dry, so there were no [leftover] tires.

“That’s why we had to ask the FIA and WEC to allow us to provide last year’s spec at Fuji.”

Alves confirmed that Michelin will return to supplying the GTE-Am field with this year’s tire specification at the 8 Hours of Bahrain season finale in November.

“At the end of July and August we produced tires for the GTE cars for Bahrain,” he said.

“So in Bahrain, everybody will be on the 2022 tires. The container has already gone. They are on the sea.”

Michelin Prioritizing GTP Tire Rollout

There are set to be no evolutions to GTE tires for next season because the GTE-Pro class is coming to an end, but Michelin is introducing a new WEC Hypercar product as well as rolling out tires for the wave of incoming GTP manufacturers to IMSA.

Alves explained that Michelin is concentrating on getting tires to the IMSA GTP grid first, meaning that WEC Hypercar teams will need to be patient for theirs to arrive.

“We are developing a new spec for Hypercar and IMSA GTP next year,” he said.

“IMSA starts in December with the sanctioned test at Daytona, then the Roar and the Rolex 24 [in January]. So the first production is fully dedicated to IMSA.

“That’s why we will not be able to supply the new specs to Hypercar before January. But everybody will be the same: no WEC teams will be able to test the new spec before 2023.

“We will just do what we call ‘test tires’, trying compounds and casings. But the final tire doesn’t exist yet. We have to start building a tire this week, to build a stock to supply for next year.

“The demand is huge because we start from zero stock of slicks and wets. We are completely renewing the range for Hypercar. It’s going to be very challenging.”