Let us begin with brake release. First off, a skidding tyre has less authority to affect direction. If skidding from the start, the left bogie is having less effect on direction than the right. That means the a/c will tend right, and may explain the Captain's initial left ruddering. (with four healthy engines))
I guess I should have specified that I meant conditions after the tyre was demolished. The BEA report (18.2.3.3) deals with the situation before that and all the evidence presented there says that the missing spacer and consequent freedom of bogie to yaw had no effect on the trajectory in that phase. I know no better.
For the record, I would suggest that as a whole, asymmetrical thrust had far more to do with track than tyres.
I'm wholly with you there
