What do you guys think? i turned off my tele about 10 mins after the start
Ridiculous!!!
Ferrari…Shumacker…what an amazing team…not even for his brother safety…
It was a total joke.
Absolute crap. Not what F1 needed in it’s efforts to capture interest & fan base in the US.
A disgraceful exhibition of Formula One politics at it’s worst and in the
most important market for F1 to break into.
Absolute BS. All the teams dropping out and Michelin should be fined a sufficient amount to reimburse every ticket holder, and television rights holders and sponsors. Not to mention - if Michelin can’t supply the tires needed for a race (for a course that has been raced on before) - wouldn’t that be a severe breach of contract - why couldn’t the teams switch to Bridgestone?
check the thread ‘if you thought triathlon didn’t go well’ 
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and it took Michelin how long ahead of time to figure this out?
kinda like going to war and having the ammo folks say, “…oops…ah fellas…we got a bit of a problem here.”
pretty easy to blame it on Michelin I think. These guys have been working hard and have always provided top notch tires.
During the tests, they couldn’t figure out why Ralf’s tire exploded. Apparently the tires didn’t tolerate the constraints of the circuit but the engineers didn’t know why and they are working on it.
It’s once in how many Grand Prix? Tough luck, they are doing modeling to get these tires. They want optimal tires, and go to the edge and this time it didn’t work.
Michelin asked the FIA if a ‘chicane’ could be put on the circuit which was denied (rightfully so as it would penalized other teams) and then asked if the teams could race with tires that didn’t do the quals. which was also denied because of the rules…the teams withdrew because the FIA didn’t let them bend the rules considering Michelin preferred them not to go with these tires for safety reasons…
FIA forbid Michelin from shipping in tires from France a week ago. Neither Michelin or the teams are responsible for this mess; FIA is solely to blame this mess because they chose to quote the rulebook instead of making an exception for driver safety.
The problem isn’t the tires either, it’s the crappy track at Indy. Recall, Ralf almost died in that same poorly designed turn. The Ferrari team was the only one with the guts to say no to adding a chicane and demanded new tires; they were even willing to be DQed if a chicane was added but no change in tires.
But, FIA decides no chicane, no new tires, no resurfacing of the corner, just race as is; but that’ not safe and the teams did the right thing by pulling out.
I wasn’t aware of the tire shipping thing…even worse than I thought…
Michelin did all they could to preserve the (relative) safety of the drivers after the friday freak accident.
Note - nice sig astrotri
The Canadian GP the week before in Montreal was a great race. Can’t believe what a joke Indianapolis was. Won’t help in bringing F1 back to the US.
and if drivers dnfed they could go to the ‘beach’ 
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not pointing a finger. it seems incomprehensible that it would come down to the last few hours without someone knowing well before that there was a pretty significant issue facing them all…only to end up in that kind of sloppy mess.
yes, but it’s clearly the FIA’s fault in view of the post of astrotri (confirmed in l’Equipe mag)…the FIA denied every single request to ensure adequate tires for the michelin equipped teams…
“The problem isn’t the tires either, it’s the crappy track at Indy. Recall, Ralf almost died in that same poorly designed turn. The Ferrari team was the only one with the guts to say no to adding a chicane and demanded new tires; they were even willing to be DQed if a chicane was added but no change in tires.”
I can’t see blaming the track as it is the same track for each team and its been the same track year after year. (In bike racing you don’t see teams complaining the Paris Roubaix is too bumpy, etc.) I always thought the cool thing about F-1 was that thery raced no matter the track condition - wet or dry.
I am not an avid F-1 follower but the whole situation seems to be only partially based on driver safety and mostly based in political battles.
David K
Well, the tracks in F1 still have to meet minimum requirements which apparently weren’t met this weekend.
Besides, going over cobbles at 25mph is a lot less dangerous than going over rough asphalte at 200mph with a car that could potentially turn into a plane over a tiny speedbump
I thought to myself:
“it’s a good day to start the TdF!”
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WHat a farce…Im only glad I was at home and I could swtch it off…or go do some yard word or something…I had friends who went, they left early… to make the 11 hr drive home.
The FIA, Teams, etc simply gave the fans teh finger and said “you dont matter…we’re more important…we’re taking our shit and going home”…its a shame no compromise could be reached and the show could no t go on. The losers are the fans and this is terrible…I felt terrible for everyone there. F1 may be dead in the US…it may never recover…if so it will take awhile. I consider myself a pretty big fan and I was completely turned off…if I would have paid tickets, lodging , travel…etc…I would have been even more pissed.
F1 gave the fans the bird…and I dont blame the fans if they ever fill teh stands again.
I would have been pissed if I had traveled to Indy and bought tickets. It’s too bad because this is a fun race to attend.
While this will end F1 in the US, this “debacle” actually brings together all that makes F1 interesting to the true fan. It was and will be for some time F1 politics at its best and most entertaining.
The basics are as follows. The powers that be would love to get back to only having one tire supplier. 2 suppliers competing against each other leads to faster tires but also slightly less safe tires as they push the envolope. There is also some way that Ecclestone (the owner of F1) can make more money if he only has one tire supplier to deal with. It also leads to the farce this season was becoming since up to now, the Michelin tires were head and shoulders faster than the Bridgestones. Since teams are contractually locked to their tire suppliers, the Bridgestone teams (including Ferrari - the most popular team) were basically out of the running early this year.
Suddenly the tables were reversed. Ferrari had not interest in helping out the Michilin teams who had been walking all over them so far this season. The FIA and F1 saw their chance to punish one of the suppliers and maybe force them out. A big game of chicken ensued and the Michelin teams did not race. Those teams and Michelin will pay dearly for this. Like all great F1 controversies, it will fill newspapers and chat rooms for months to come. Eventually it probably end up in court.
F1 is a soap opera, not just a sport. You get comfortable with that fact to be a true fan.