How many of you watched the US Grand Prix this weekend? It wasn’t really much of a race, except when Michael Schumacher came out of his second pit stop and his team mate Rubens Barrichello wanted the same piece of Tarmac. Apart from that there wasn’t much action at all. The only interesting part was interviews with people who did not really know what was happening, namely the fans, track organisers and drivers.
The background: Ralph Schumacher suffered a left rear tyre blow out at the high speed section of the Indianapolis circuit during Friday practice. Resulting in him crashing out heavily and later pulling out of the race weekend as a safety precaution. Ricardo Zonta, also Toyota, suffered a similar blow out but at a different part of the circuit. As such Toyota discovered that the Michelin tyres had a fundamental flaw in them, which lead the Michelin tyre company to release a statement saying that it was not safe for drivers to go out on their tyres. This lead to a series of events and discussions between Michelin, Michelin teams, and the FIA – the governing body of Formula One, but resulted in no agreement and as such the Michelin teams withdrew from the race after the parade lap to the race.
The way I see it is quite simple. It was Michelin’s boo boo, but the FIA was also a big baby and didn’t want to play along. No one saw the bigger picture and resulted in a six car race, disappointing fans, spectators, sponsors and Formula One.
Although Michelin realised it had made quite a big mistake, they also offered a series of solutions such as building a chicane at the final part of the circuit to reduce the speed of the cars. The FIA had rejected this and also offered alternatives that would not break the rules (i.e. changing of tyres on safety grounds); or possibility of using a different tyre but suffering a heavy penalty (but not exclusion). I don’t think the chicane idea would work. Yes it would slow the cars down, but building it 30 minutes before the race and asking drivers to guess what to do with no prior experience of it is dangerous. The cars are also set up to be able to drive a certain type of gear ratios and transmission throughout the lap and a chicane would change all this for every team, and especially disadvantaging the Bridgestone runners who did not have this problem. But the big point about the chicane is that I don’t believe slowing the cars down would avoid the tyre problem. It was a fundamental flaw in the tyre construction and was probably equally likely to self-destruct anywhere on the circuit.
I’d like to get one point across though and I believe that Ferrari and Bridgestone are the innocent party out of this. Although Ferrari were not part of the 9 out of 10 teams that wanted a new chicane to be put in place at the last corner, it is entirely up to the FIA to make the final decision about this. Ferrari suffered abuse from the crowd in the shape of bottles and beer being thrown at them during the “race”. Immediately after the race, I read on the BBC website that it was Ferrari’s fault because they scuppered the plans for the chicane as they were the odd team out that rejected the idea. Although Jordan and Minardi were part of the 9 teams that originally intended to pull out of the race, they did eventually race. Jordan wanted the easy points and money available to them through such extreme circumstances. Paul Stoddart, of Minardi, claims he didn’t want to race his cars, but couldn’t afford to let Jordan gain such an advantage over them.
It was quite sad and shocking to see all 14 Michelin cars pull in at the end of the parade lap. I think some people with the powers to change all this knew that it was a possibility, but thought “they won’t do that…”. Although given the same situation for me, I would have followed team orders to not race, even if in my blood I wanted to. Like how David Coulthard said he wanted to race on the radio to his team on the parade lap. If Michelin say it’s not safe to use their tyres but you ignore it, they won’t be held liable if anything did happen.
At the end of the day, I believe the blame should land squarely on Michelin, although doubts about the FIA authority may come to mind. Michelin knew in advance the rules of the game, but having discovered their tyres were not capable of racing safely, they wanted to break several rules in order to allow the teams to race. Perhaps the FIA should have allowed this due to extreme circumstances but to be consistent they also had to take this stance. At the beginning of the year when Minardi did not have a 2005 spec car to race, the FIA disallowed them to participate in the race. Although later they were allowed to race having visited the courts, but they worked on it overnight to change the car to 2005 spec.
Interestingly, the rules say Michelin are also supposed to bring a “back-up tyre” in case of such events. This tyre could have been used even if it was of lower performance. The rules do allow the teams to use this second tyre had it been available before the qualifying session, so all this could have been avoided. Michelin did ship out a second tyre but after the qualifying session in which the teams would be bound to the chosen set of tyres, in which they are allowed to change them for safety reasons.
Quite a mess and embarrassing weekend for Formula One. I’d be really annoyed if I flew all the way to the USA to see 6 cars basically do a test session. I’m sure there were several thousand unhappy fans over there, and if I were there, I wouldn’t ask the track organisers for a refund. They had no control over all this. Ask Michelin and/or the FIA. They should get together and provide a refund and compensation to the poor fans who traveled from everywhere to see this disgrace. What about the sponsors and large corporations that invest in the teams? Let’s hope everything will be back to normal soon. Of course, if the FIA stopped fiddling with the rules so much, this may not have happened, but I still think that if you knew the rules of the game, you play by the rules, even if you don’t like the consequences.
Formula One aside, I’ve had a pretty hot weekend. Right now as I type this entry, it’s a sweltering 34C in my room and I have my window open and fan on full speed!
Update: Obviously both sides blame each other, but I still prefer to side with the FIA. Quoting from ww.itv-f1.com website, an FIA statement said:“A chicane would have forced all cars, including those with tyres optimised for high-speed, to run on a circuit whose characteristics had changed fundamentally – from ultra-high speed to very slow and twisting…It would also have involved changing the circuit without following any of the modern safety procedures, possibly with implications for the cars and their brakes. It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of an American court had there been an accident (whatever its cause) with the FIA having to admit it had failed to follow its own rules and safety procedures.”
“F1’s rules cannot be negotiated each time a competitor brings the wrong equipment to a race…The FIA wrote to all of the teams and both tyre manufacturers on June 1, 2005, to emphasise that ‘tyres should be built to be reliable under all circumstances’. Each team is allowed to bring two types of tyre: one an on-the-limit potential race winner, the other a back-up which, although slower, is absolutely reliable. Apparently, none of the Michelin teams brought a back-up to Indianapolis. Rather than boycott the race the Michelin teams should have agreed to run at reduced speed in turn 13. The rules would have been kept, they would have earned Championship points and the fans would have had a race. As it is, by refusing to run unless the FIA broke the rules and handicapped the Bridgestone runners, they have damaged themselves and the sport.”
I agree entirely with the FIA and as I said previously the chicane wouldn’t have been a feasable solution. Oh well…let’s see what happens in the next few days.
