Williams technical director has promised fans that F1 races are set to get even more exciting than during the insomnia-inducing 2009 season this year, with shorter tyre-only pit stops set to produce a "really good show". Somehow.
For 2010, with refuelling banned, teams will only change tyres during pit stops. Only one pit stop will be mandatory for teams, as drivers are still forced to use both tyre compounds during a race, but Michael believes that the "bloody impressive" speed with which these new tyre stops will take place will somehow make F1 more exciting.
"How fast these guys are changing the tyres is bloody impressive and it’s going to be a really good show I think in Formula 1," Michael bragged to reporters during the recent Valencia test.
"Formula 1 is unique in terms of pit-stop times because a lot of other categories either don’t have pit stops or they have a limited number of people in pit stops, so they are generally slow. But the pit-stop times in Formula 1…it is going to be an impressive race.
"So I think they will easily smash the previous records."
Although Williams themselves have said that sub-three second stops may be possible after pre-season test runs on the new procedure, Michael believes that the new, swifter stop will make mistakes more prevalent.
"Absolutely," he said when asked whether more mistakes were likely, "To be honest they’ve been on a cruise for 15 years because they are fuel limited. So they could have a spare four seconds up their sleeve in previous times.
"So there was no desire to push them for those last two or three tenths because as you push for those two or three tenths you make mistakes, so you’d rather say slow down by half a second to make sure you get it right."
Michael also backed the recent rule tweak by the FIA and the F1 teams that will force the top ten drivers on the grid to start the race on the tyres they qualified on, saying that without such a rule then qualifying would end up producing the sort of annoying results where the fastest driver ends up qualifying first or somesuch madness.
"I think [the new rule is] a good thing because if you look at the grid otherwise, it’s just purely formed on pace order," Michael pointed out.
He did, though, add that Bridgestone would need to ensure a big difference between compounds in order to properly mix the grid order up.
"It will only make a difference if you’ve got a big difference between the prime and option [compound]," he mused, “If they are only one or two tenths apart it won’t make a big difference at all because everyone will just take the prime because they won’t risk taking the option.
"But ideally if you’ve got an option [tyre] that’s four or five tenths quicker then you’ll get people on the edge of seventh, eighth and ninth saying ‘right, I’m close enough to get to third or fourth if I take the option and I’ll just put up with holding everyone up for the first stint.'
"So it will create some differentiator – like the fuel load did. It’s a semi-replacement for what the fuel load used to do when people used to vary their first stint. So it creates some decision making."
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