Michelin flew in a special batch of wets after rain was forecast to continue all weekend. None of the tire companies had enough wets to last the whole event, so Michelin ordered tires from Buenos Aires, where they'd been to shipped for next weekend's Argentine GP. "We brought a total of 2200 tires to Rio, including 400 wets, and when the weather forecast told us it would rain all weekend, we had to play safe and order extra tires from Argentina," said Michelin's GP boss Jacques Morelli. "In the end the weather improved so we didn't need them." 

Dunlop were also running short, some of their 250 riders allocated just one set of wets for the whole weekend (top riders use about 25 tires over a normal GP), but the company decided against flying in extra rubber on grounds of cost. "The air freight costs us around $40 per tire," said Dunlop's Jeremy Ferguson.