The US Grand Prix at Laguna Seca looked like it might turn into a t๊otal disaster for Michelin, after the French manufacturer badly misjudged the tr🔯ack conditions and handed its teams overly hard tyres - prompting the shocking sight of some intermediates being used on a dry track in the cool morning practice sessions.

Whilst qualifying rubber helped salvage reasonable grid positions, most riders had only one or two competitive tyres to work with all weekend💜 and - although the race wasn't the disaster it might have been - Michelin riders managed 🍰only fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth in a Bridgestone dominated top ten.

Some of the Michelin riders had b🉐een struggling to contain their frustration - Colin Edwards pretended to strangle his technician on camera - and Michelin competitions director Frederic Henry-Biabaud admitted they had made a⭕ mistake.

"Looking at today's result we can say that we weren't ambitious enough because of what happened last year at this track," said Henry-Biabaud. "We didn't want the same problem this time, so we recommended a very conservative direction to our teams. It was a mistake from which we have leaꦜrned."

"The starting point o🃏f our difficulties this weekend was the problems we had last year, when the track was more ag🐟gressive and the track temperature higher than expected, which gave us wear problems," confirmed Jean-Philippe Weber, Michelin's director of motorcycle racing. "This year the track was much less aggressive. Also, the track temperature was lower than last year, but in fact not so bad because we saw the high 40s on Friday.

"Based on last year's situation we were too conserva🌜tive, with too-hard constructions and compounds which gave reduced performance. Our riders had only a limited supply of tyres they could use💞 for the race, so they had to work with harder tyres during practice. It's been a really difficult weekend because our approach was far too conservative," he continued.

"From now on we have to share more our tyre strategy and allocation strategy with the teams. For example, Colin Edwards requested some fronts for this race w𝄹hich he had already used this year at less demanding tracks. He could have used those tyres here, so he was right.

"On a positive note, it was great to see Andrea [Dovizioso] fighting with Nicky [Hayden] for fourth, that was a very impressive result for a Laguna Seca newcomer and showed his impressiv💜e strengths. Randy [de Puniet] also rode a good race. He used an even harder rear tyre than the others and he found a good machine set-up. But obviously we aren't happy with our riders' lap times here, because we didn't give th𝄹em enough grip."

The best Michelin race lap was a 1min 22.915sec𒀰s by Hayden, which was 1.427secs slower than Casey Stoner.

Michelin now plans an aggressive development programme before the next MotoGP event in the Czech Republic on Aꦑugust 15-17.

"Over the next three weeks we will therefore work in two directions," said Henry-Biabaud. "First, we will organise tests at several tracks. Second, we will continue developing some new solutions that we already have under development and which we will recommend to our teams for the next races, re🀅presenting a more ambitious direction.

"We w🙈ill also evolve the way we recommend tyre solutions to our teams, because this way we can deliver better performance. The season is far from over and we look forward to the last seven races after some very positive races already this year.

"Dani [Pedrosa] was leading the championship going into last weekend's German GP where he also led the race. It was ve🐓ry sad that he got hurt when he fell, but he made the correct decision not to race h🧔ere, considering his injuries.

"It's also a great shame that Jorge Lorenzo has suffered some injuries after his fantastic start to the season. Now we have to keep work๊ing hard, in fact we have to work even harder. We will certainly do everything we can to deliver more performance to our teams," he insisted.