“They” meaning Max Mosley specifically. The same guy who presented his own proposed changes to tech specs for after the 2008 expiration of the Concorde Agreement as part of a speech condemning the sport for having become “divorced from reality”. Nobody needs you, Max. You’ve done enough damage. Now be a good lad and bugger off.
Tony George’s contribution was to give the attendees the addresses of Michelin, Bernie Ecclestone, and Max Mosley. Yep, for once, he’s one of the good guys.
The casino could easily be seen in the wide-angle helicopter shots from just south of the Senna Curve.
Yes, it’s extremely irksome to be forced to admit he’s done nothing wrong in this particular case. How unjust to be deprived of an otherwise perfect opportunity to further demonize someone I already despise with more passion than cause.
(Is it very obvious that I’ve been reading Jane Austen lately?)
I don’t watch racing, F1 or any of the US versions, but I found this story interesting.
For all the fuck-ups that happened, the way I saw it was this. The teams all should have raced as is. Yes, F1 has some dumb rules, and alot of people were stubborn for curious reasons. But here’s the thing IMHO, racing is all about driving within the limits of your equipment. If you chose tires which suck, too bad, if the rules state that you can’t change them, so be it. Go out, race, know that you have a limitation in that turn and adjust accordingly.
Sure, there’s a safety issue, but racing is one giant safety issue. And they know that you can safely make that turn at a lower speed, so do it. They know that have to slow down at other turns to prevent hitting a wall, why should this turn be any different? Yeah, the Bridgestone guys have an advantage, but isn;t that part of the “different manufactrer” game?
Because it’s more like Russian roulette. F1 cars aren’t really designed for circuits where full-speed impact into concrete walls is likely, certainly since a certain Brazilian had a little incident. A blowout on that turn would be very dangerous indeed. And it’s no good to say ‘drive within the capabilities of the hardware’, because the whole problem was they didn’t know the limitations of the tyres. Anything else is calculated & measured & calculated again, and given time it would have been possible to work out safe speeds for those tyres.
Also, take into account the battles against manslaughter charges after Senna’s death. F1 is never going to send drivers out to gamble against an unknown factor in those circumstances.
This subject came up at lucnh yesterday. One of the guys at the table had an interesting take on it. He said that at some point you gotta run what you brung. If Bridgestone had been the tire with the problem, no one would be urging a change in the track, the field would have started 6 cars short.
On the other hand, I am damn glad that I did not shell out for tickets, airfare, and a hotel.
All the regulations…equipment, track conditions, eligibility, times, etc…must be set in stone and clearly explained to all relevant parties before the event.
Safety first. No needless risking of life and limb for some game.
If for some reason the event can’t go as scheduled, it’s rescheduled. Damn the cost, damn the reservation messups. Either do it right or not at all.
If any part of the event does not conform to regulation, that invalidates the event. It needs to be (yes) rescheduled and held again.
Every real sport follows these rules. Every. These are very basic rules which the league must follow if it expects to have any legitimacy whatsoever. Baseball has rain delays, boxing has injury stoppages, and NASCAR stops the race for as long as damn necessary when there’s oil on the road. Nobody seems to have a problem with any of this.
This is F1, not some flippin’ college hot rod club. They should know better.
Anyway, I think the best thing to do is to move to someplace slower and with corners. Something like Infineon or Laguna Seca. That’s what F1 is supposed to be about anyway. Probably won’t be as much of a crowd, but after this fiasco there won’t be much of a crowd anywhere.
First, with your boxing analogy. They do stop the fight for injury…and the injured party is the loser, no rescheduling of the fight (except in some extreme circumstance which invalidates the fight, and it’s still not automatically resceduled).
Secondly, “needless” risk of life is a pretty vague and relative term. Most would argue that racing in and of itself crosses that line. And the entire “sport” of racing is treading that line between safe and unsafe. Baseball isn’t a realistic comparison, there’s no intrinsic danger in the game like racing. They stop it for lightning, not for a pitcher that’s throwing too hard and wild.
There was nothing about this event that didn’t conform. The equipment didn’t meet the demands. Racing is all about the quality of the equipment. Thats a factor of the participant, not the race. If they cannot compete due to choises they made, why would the race be rescheduled to their benefit at everyone else’s cost?
Wait. You’re saying you have to go an entire race on one set of four tires? I’m so used to distance races where you expect at least 5 or 6 pit stops and that many tire changes, that I’m completely amazed. How long is a F1 race? I never watch F1, and for that matter generally the only open-wheel racing I watch at all is the Indy 500. Otherwise, if I watch racing, I’m watching NASCAR.
Yes, this is a new rule for this season. The same tires must be used for qualifying and the entire race. Tires can only be changed in the event of tire damage and you cannot refuel during a pit stop where you change tires, thus penalizing a team that doesn’t manage its tires by forcing extra pit stops. You can only replace a race tire with tires used in the Friday practice sessions. If you run out of those tires, you have to retire from the race.
Unlike the 500 mile/four hour marathons that NASCAR generally runs, F1 races are generally slotted to last around about an hour and a half. The race distance is never exactly a round number like 200 miles, but its around that distance.
The reason for the new rule was that last year the feeling was that speeds were getting “too fast” because the tires were “too good”. You could change tires at any time. The one tire rule was put in place to force Bridgestone and Michelin to be more conservative in how they construct their tires. Not surprisingly, serious tire wear has been a issue throughout the season leading up to the USGP. Michael Schumacher retired out of the Spanish Grand Prix when his tires went away completely. Kimi Raikkonen flat-spotted his tire towards the end of the European Grand Prix which directly led to the catastrophic failure of his front suspension on the final lap while in the lead. The tires generally look pretty horrible at the end of the race, even on cars like the McLaren, which are notably easy on them.
Its more than a little ironic that this flaw popped up in a tire that was ostenibly constructed more conservatively than last year’s model…
Where do the fans’ interests enter into that analysis? The sport doesn’t exist in its own bubble, with spectators grudgingly permitted to pay to watch it, although that does seem to be the general attitude (and has for many years). That arrogance has a lot to do with F1’s difficulties in attracting a fan base in a country where professional sports organizations know they’re in the entertainment business, and the product they provide had better be entertaining or they’re out of business. It’s a bit of a mystery to me why it’s tolerated so readily in the rest of the world - perhaps because they don’t have any real competition to their business there to force reality upon them? Does Bernie have any idea why NASCAR has been so successful, or why he’s so lucky there’s nothing comparable in any other racing market?
Racing is NOT “all about the quality of the equipment”, or about the drivers’ skill either. It’s the entertainment business. That’s the basic fact. Those things are factors in the quality of the entertainment product, nothing more. Above all else, F1 had an obligation, to itself as a business as well as to the fans, its customers, to provide a real race. They could have done so with any number of actions, but it never even dawned on them that they had to try. They not only stiffed their customers, they insulted them too, and the effect on their business is as predictable as it would be for any other type of business.
FWIW, I’ve seen other stories that Michelin *did * manage to get a supply of stronger tires to Indy in time, but the teams would not have been allowed to use them. No question, the original source of the trouble lies with them, but the decisions that made it a travesty were made by others.
Can you, or anyone else, provide a cite for this? I’ve heard people claim it elsewhere, but I haven’t seen any report that stated it as a fact. It seems unlikely to me to be true, since the letter from FIA (linked somewhere above) specifically said that if the teams wanted to suffer the penalties, they could change tires. And since the Michelin teams were willing to run the race with a chicane and give up all points, why wouldn’t they have taken the tire change option as a much preferable alternative?
Sorry, the site where I thought I’d seen it doesn’t have it anymore. It may not be true. The facts will likely emerge over the next few days, but frankly, this fan is having increasing trouble caring.
