F1 Farce
I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing yesterday. Six cars on the grid in the US Grand Prix in Indianapolis. Two Ferraris heading off into the sunset for a one-two podium finish; the four cars that usually run at the back of the grid trailing around behind.
Who do I blame? The FIA. In the past couple of years, they have changed the rules in order to suit themselves and the sponsors, and they have forgotten the fans.
The first stupid change was single lap qualifying. I used to love watching qualifying. Okay, so at the start of the session there were usually only one or two cars going around the track, but that was okay because I knew that there would be a lot of excitement on track while everyone flew around at once and took the risks of being caught up in traffic. TV cameras did a pretty good job of showing whoever was going fastest at the time. If you were at the track, you couldn't see everything anyway, so what was the point of changing it just because of TV coverage? Sponsors. It didn't matter what the fans thought. The sponsors wanted equal air time, and the "lesser" teams at the back of the grid like the Jordans and Minardis weren't getting an equal showing.
The second stupid change was having an engine last first for one race weekend, now for two. It hasn't been as much of a fiasco as I thought it would be, but I seriously doubt that there has been any cost savings involved, which was the reason given for the new rule. Manufacturers have had to spend more money trying to figure out how to make the engines more reliable!
But the change that I find the most thoughtless was the rule banning tyre changes for the whole weekend. Saturday morning the teams have to pick the tyres they want to run, and that's it. Why do I find this thoughtless? It's dangerous. Just look at Kimi Raikkonen's crash at the European Grand Prix a few weeks ago. He knew his tyre was on the verge of blowing and had been damaged for quite a few laps, but because of the penalties involved in changing it, the team left it. When it caused a failure in his car, not only did Kimi have a spectacular crash, but he came within inches of taking Jenson Button out with him.
Flashback to the Australian Grand Prix of 2001. Jacques Villeneuve had a crash, which he walked away from, but one of the tethers that was supposed to keep his tyre attached to the car broke, and a marshall was killed. To me, this new tyre rule risks just such an accident.
I don't blame the Michelin teams for not running yesterday. The farce was created by the FIA and their resistance to compromise. Forget the chicane the teams asked for to slow down the high speeds into the last, and most dangerous, corner of the Indy track. They wouldn't even accept letting the Michelin teams change their tyres and run either at the back of the grid behind the Ferraris, Jordans and Minardis, but the teams also offered to run and receive no points, no matter what their finishing positions! What would that have harmed? The fans would have had the pleasure of seeing on-track battles for position instead of one measly encounter between Schumacher and Barrichello when Schumacher came out of his second pit stop.
Unlike a lot of people, I can't blame the Ferraris for running. It's not their fault. I haven't heard any of the team principles state that they blame Ferrari, and usually they are the first to do so. They've been pointing the finger at the FIA, and so do I.
Who do I blame? The FIA. In the past couple of years, they have changed the rules in order to suit themselves and the sponsors, and they have forgotten the fans.
The first stupid change was single lap qualifying. I used to love watching qualifying. Okay, so at the start of the session there were usually only one or two cars going around the track, but that was okay because I knew that there would be a lot of excitement on track while everyone flew around at once and took the risks of being caught up in traffic. TV cameras did a pretty good job of showing whoever was going fastest at the time. If you were at the track, you couldn't see everything anyway, so what was the point of changing it just because of TV coverage? Sponsors. It didn't matter what the fans thought. The sponsors wanted equal air time, and the "lesser" teams at the back of the grid like the Jordans and Minardis weren't getting an equal showing.
The second stupid change was having an engine last first for one race weekend, now for two. It hasn't been as much of a fiasco as I thought it would be, but I seriously doubt that there has been any cost savings involved, which was the reason given for the new rule. Manufacturers have had to spend more money trying to figure out how to make the engines more reliable!
But the change that I find the most thoughtless was the rule banning tyre changes for the whole weekend. Saturday morning the teams have to pick the tyres they want to run, and that's it. Why do I find this thoughtless? It's dangerous. Just look at Kimi Raikkonen's crash at the European Grand Prix a few weeks ago. He knew his tyre was on the verge of blowing and had been damaged for quite a few laps, but because of the penalties involved in changing it, the team left it. When it caused a failure in his car, not only did Kimi have a spectacular crash, but he came within inches of taking Jenson Button out with him.
Flashback to the Australian Grand Prix of 2001. Jacques Villeneuve had a crash, which he walked away from, but one of the tethers that was supposed to keep his tyre attached to the car broke, and a marshall was killed. To me, this new tyre rule risks just such an accident.
I don't blame the Michelin teams for not running yesterday. The farce was created by the FIA and their resistance to compromise. Forget the chicane the teams asked for to slow down the high speeds into the last, and most dangerous, corner of the Indy track. They wouldn't even accept letting the Michelin teams change their tyres and run either at the back of the grid behind the Ferraris, Jordans and Minardis, but the teams also offered to run and receive no points, no matter what their finishing positions! What would that have harmed? The fans would have had the pleasure of seeing on-track battles for position instead of one measly encounter between Schumacher and Barrichello when Schumacher came out of his second pit stop.
Unlike a lot of people, I can't blame the Ferraris for running. It's not their fault. I haven't heard any of the team principles state that they blame Ferrari, and usually they are the first to do so. They've been pointing the finger at the FIA, and so do I.
posted by Melinda at 6/20/2005 04:34:00 pm
2 Comments:
I DID catch that race. I watched it from beginning to end. I don't know what you heard over there, but here the commentators brought up an interesting point. They said that the track at Indy had been resurfaced not too terribly long ago. They said that a race or two had been run since then. They said that tire problems were experienced and that the surface had to be reground yet again. Firestone managed to come up with a tire that was able to handle the new surface in a subsequent race. Bridgestone, they pointed out, is a sister company of Firestone and they may have benefitted from knowledge passed on to them from Firestone, and, if this was actually the case, Michelin obviously would have been kept out of the loop (despite what should've been an obvious concern for safety).
What I did not understand was why the installation of a chicane would be cause for no sanctioning of the race. That just makes no sense to me.
A couple of weeks ago, NASCAR had a race at Pocono. Work had been done on this one part of the track. I can't remember who supplies the tires for NASCAR, but I know all the teams use the same tire. Numerous cars experienced flats on the left front, with one car having six flats on the left front!!! All the flat tires were sent to the manufacturer, who then came up with a tire to help prevent that problem from happening again, even though it sounded like the problem may have been the teams running different tire pressures because of a known ripple in the track at this one corner. (Hmm. I think the manufacturer for NASCAR, now that I think about it, is Goodyear. The tire manufacturer for the lowest classes of NASCAR is Hoosier.)
I can see the fact that the NASCAR race continued despite these problems and the fact that the Michelin teams did not race at the U.S. Grand Prix as being used by a lot of American fans as reason to say F1 drivers are wimps and not worth watching.
However, there does seem to be something of a dichotomy here in the States. When I was in hospital in N. Carolina shortly after my hernia surgery, I remember talking to a nurse whose husband had some connection with NASCAR mentioning that fact, that NASCAR fans generally are not also fans of F1 and F1 fans are generally not also fans of NASCAR. I think the reason for that is that F1 fans think the idea of stepping on it and turning left 99.999% OF THE TIME IS B-O-R-I-N-G! The only reason why I think a NASCAR fan wouldn't like an F1 race is that you can't see all of the track when you're at the race (or so they think). I know that at most (if not all) of the tracks, F1 races have huge monitors set up so that fans at any point of the track can see what's going on elsewhere, as well as what's going on in front of them.
I'll watch a NASCAR race, but I much prefer a road race, or a track that simulates a road race over a race on an oval track, regardless of the cars running.
Personally, I'm worried about what this will mean for F1 here in the States. I can see F1 losing part of their fan-base here. I can also imagine the race not returning to Indy because of this, and going to another track. The problem with that idea is that Indy is pretty much equidistant from all points of the U.S. and is probably the best place to hold the U.S. Grand Prix. One, because it IS equidistant. Two, because the Indy track is world-famous and will pull in fans simply for that reason alone.
I tend to be more a fan of open-wheel racing anyway, because I not only like F1, but I also like Indy car racing, and I like both of them more than NASCAR.
In the end, I blame the FIA, too!
Thanks for the info, Gary! The commentators here did mention that the track had a new surface, but they were under the impression that there hadn't been any problems with non-F1 cars, so that's a new piece of information. Evidently the FIA didn't think the surface was the problem.
I did hear them mention that Firestone probably passed info onto Bridgestone. And, of course, that means Ferrari had yet another advantage.
I still blame the FIA. I've read the letters that they issued to the teams and to Michelin over the weekend on the official FIA site, and they were absolutely useless in negotiations. Now they're going to discipline the seven teams that didn't participate! They would have disciplined them anyway if they'd raced with dangerous tyres.
I'm not a big fan of NASCAR myself. I'm one of those who finds it quite boring, not just because of all the left-left-left but because the cars look so slow in comparison to an F1 car, especially once you've seen an F1 car live!
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