The official F1 race distance is the first lap that exceeds 305 km, so most races tend to fall into the 192-195 mi range. Full-course cautions with a safety car are also rare (they usually put a standing caution just on the portion of the track affected), and this also tends to shorten the races.
BTW, it used to be that the cars weren’t allowed to refuel during the race, either. They carried their entire fuel load in vast 200 litre fuel tanks. The reasons for this were historical and not obvious. The ban on refueling wasn’t lifted until 1994.
Just a couple of points to clear up some confusion above:
The circuit has recently been resurfaced (someting to do with diamond cut but don’t ask me the specifics), Bridgestone has information on it from the Firestone arm of the company who have involvement with the Indy500. Michelin did not have any data on the new surface and as such the join between the tyre wall and the tread was not tough enough for the banked turn.
Martin Brundle was saying they couldn’t just build a chicane and expect the Formula 1 cars to drive around the track with no test data as many of the systems are designed specifically for that circuit and adding another 50m of chicane instead of a high speed turn would not be possible. They added a few chicanes to circuits after Senna’s death but they used to chicanes for the whole weekend so were used to them.
Possibly-relevant question - in that period after Senna dies that all sorts of changes were being made, what were the regulations regarding computerised systems? I’m wondering if at that time there was less need for test data due to more conventional systems being involved.
The more-abrasive road surface, caused by surface-grinding the new pavement for consistent grip, was not related to the carcass separation issue. Side loads are a function only of speed, radius, and bank angle, all of which are well-known. Michelin did muck up, no question.
The cars wouldn’t have been optimized for a chicane, no, but they’d all have been in the same situation. The Indy road course is, however, almost perfectly balanced between high-speed and low-speed sections, so that downforce choice is almost irrelevant - you can go fast in one section but not the other, or compromise between them, and you’ll have about the same lap times no matter what. Cars with low-downforce wing settings might have been at a disadvantage with a late-added chicane, tipping the optimum balance of settings toward high downforce settings, yes, but those can be changed quickly in a single pit stop. The race would have been a little chaotic at first, yes, but no more than if a rainstorm popped up and everyone had to decide when to dash in for the wet tires. F1 *needs * more interesting races than have been the norm in recent years, anyway. And 9 of the 10 teams, excepting only Ferrari, were willing to run with a chicane anyway, Martin Brundle’s opinion notwithstanding. (Where was Murray when you needed him?)
I don’t follow F1 anymore but I was amused by this fiasco. I lay the blame on:
Michelin for not having a suitable backup tyre available.
The Michelin teams for conspiring to strongarm the FIA to bend the rules to overcome their technical disadvantage and screwing the spectators in the process.
FIA for making dumb rules (not for enforcing them).
The USA’s penchant for litigation certainly had something to do with it also.
Ferrari doesn’t come out looking too good either but no one can blame them for what happened.
[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/4119526.stm]Paul Stoddart blames Mosley entirely, including this clarification of the replacement-tire situation:
Nothing there about the implication for race rules if the replacement tires *had * been adequate as well as available.
I pretty much agree with these points. Enough has been said already. I’m just damn glad I didn’t go this year. Costs a lot to drag a camper or trailer out there from the west coast. We were planning on hitting Montreal then going on to Indy and making a big deal out of it. Glad we stayed home. Don’t know if I’ll ever go to another, mostly for other reasons, but this is a major consideration.
What strikes me about all the “discussion” is that almost no-one ever mentions driver safety. I blame Michelin, but I find it hard to fault the drivers/teams for refusing to put lives (drivers, marshalls, spectators) at an unnessary risk. Its just a race. No need to turn it into a “blood sport”. Jesus, people! Whats next? 200 mph Demolition Derby?
I don’t know anymore myself. Seems like the Michelin teams made an honest effort to put on a show but without the support of Ferrari nothing could ever be made to salvage the situation. Ferrari even gave team orders during the race to keep Barrichelo behind Schumacher! I doubt making the USGP a non-championship race would leave anyone satisfied, even if it went ahead with 18 cars.
Do you have a cite for that? Only it seems to me they were racing right up until the final pit stop when Rubens out-braked himself trying to stay ahead of Michael as he came out of the pit lane.
Right, it was sometime during the race like I said. I just read a race report and the incident which prompted the team order fits that description.
I just think it shows a poor sporting spirit on the part of Ferrari. They were racing against themselves and even that they denied the spectators.
On the other hand I must say this about the Michelin teams. There were points for grabs. They could have slowed down to a safe speed set by Michelin or even avoided turn 13 altogether driving through the pit lane. They chose to retire en masse instead of racing for 7th position.
I don’t think building a chicane was a solution at all. It was unfair, unsafe and sets a very bad precedent.
I’ll think you’ll find that most, if not all, teams that allow their drivers to race each other only do so until the final round of stops. With overtaking being difficult and dangerous on a lot of tracks, why risk both cars achieving good points finishes when the best opportunity to get past - the pit stops - have already gone?
At least Ferrari now allow Barrichello to race Schumacher since their falling out at Monaco. You know, when Schumacher went against the above and overtook Barrichello on the last lap, despite orders to stay behind him.
Oh, heck, we can beat that. In 1981 and 1982 the U.S. Grand Prix was held on a temporary circuit laid out in the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a casino.
And that’s important for another reason. Formula One had a rule at the time that they could not be the first race to be run on any new circuit. I think the idea was to run some lower category of cars first to reveal any peculiar flaws in the design or construction of the track. The rule was suspended for the 1981 event, and the surface began to break up under the heat and the load that the F1 cars were putting on it. You ignore the procedures at your peril.
Chicanes were installed on a lot of tracks in the wake of Senna’s death, but were any of them done with only 12 hours before a race? I assume they were going to do something a little more elaborate than just laying out traffic cones, but is there a concrete that can cure sufficiently in that time to withstand those cars running over it (and you know they would)? In Canada, one driver clipped the curbing on the last turn and it upset the car enough that it went into the outside wall; not too bad there, but would a chicane on the higher speed section at Indy cause more problems than it solved? I’d like to see what they had in mind.
The FIA was pretty damned inflexible in not finding a compromise, but I think they had some justification in not messing about with things at the last minute. In a fiasco this big, there’s more than enough blame to spread around, but the egos involved are much too big to allow anyone to step up and accept any of it. The folks at Michelin are being absolute asses in not admitting that they deserve at least some part of it.
There was definitely at least one circuit which got a tyre-wall chicane (possibly at the Bus Stop at Spa), which was moved after the first day of practice because the drivers complained about the layout being too tight.
F1 just can’t get it together. This is just one more in a long series of farces that F1 has inflicted or has allowed to be inflicted on the public. Does anyone remember a few years back when Schumacher mysteriously slowed in the last turn, allowing Barrichello to overtake him for the win? The hue and cry over that was deafening. This, I’m sad to say, is even worse.
In the US racing may be done with dated, lower tech equipment, but it’s competitive, exciting, and it fosters rivalries among drivers and polarizes fans. It also allows bottom feeders to do well and maybe win at any given track and turns perennial winners into also-rans in the space of a few weeks. F1 was starting to get it together, and then this happens.
Bring back the parade lap racing if this is what the results are going to be with the new rules.
Omniscient - Whatever, dude…I’m not about to quibble what constitutes a reasonable risk or part of the game or whichever. I honestly don’t know enough about the sport to assess blame.
But no matter what, running the race with six cars was an unbelievably rock-stupid thing to do. When the legitimacy of the contest has been compromised, you do not just plow blithely ahead and pray for the best. Remember the women’s gymnastics all-around where the vault was set too low (i.e., equipment not conforming to regulation, which in a REAL sport invalidates the entire contest)? The officials decided because some competitors already went ahead, and the scores were already in, and this thing, and that thing, to just let the damn show go on.
Exactly the same deal here. The race was cut off at the knees, everyone knew it, and the officials decided to go the hell ahead with it anyway. And nobody won. The fans got ripped off, Michael Schumacher (who really doesn’t need more problems) got another tainted win, fourteen teams took a big hit in the championship, and this all but wrecked F1’s credibility in America. Why did the officials, the ones with all the power, knowing that they had a disaster on their hands, not even stop the race and try to get things hashed out? If they forced the Michelin teams to get on the track, creating tremendous bad blood within the organization and possibly contributing to a terrible crash, that still would’ve been better than running with six cars.
Just a horrendous decision, and I think the lawsuit is completely justified. I’d be shocked if there wasn’t one.
From what I’ve heard, both Ferrari pilots were actually willing to race with a chicane put in place, and said so at a pilots’ meeting on Sunday morning. Ferrari decided to let the FIA take the decision, and the FIA decided that they wouldn’t allow it.
Also, Omniscient and DKW, I’ve heard that a race may be cancelled if there are not 12 pilots running, but that it’s not obligatory to do so. So I guess it could have been stopped, but what would they have done then? Could they have rescheduled it later?
