Quote Originally Posted by rallyfiend
Given that the top teams wouldn't even pay for the tyres (those Michelin stickers don't appear on the cars for free!), plus the money to ship the tyres around, plus the probable could of million in sponsorship of the WRC to the Promoter etc etc, there is no way any tyre manufacturer is involved in the WRC for anything other than marketing and business-to-business reasons.
I'm not talking about WRC, I don't know details. But in ERC they appear on the cars for free... In regulations of Ypres you could find that drivers had to put stickers of the tyre manufacturers on certain places on the car (all 4 corners of the car). And those stickers didn't affect the price of the tyres... Tyre manufacturers are having a big influence at FIA and are actually making the rules themselves, to some degree. This is a public secret and I'm sure some people on this forum can confirm it.