US GP: F1 fiasco

Gol-leee!
I dont watch racing much, or pay all that much attention to it.. except during the big Nascar and Indy car events.

Imagine my surprise when I learned this morning that the running field for the US Grand PRix (pretetentious enough without this incident) was a total of six cars.

Michelin which supplies rubber for 14 of the 20 entered had advised its teams not to run for safety reasons, as there were two incidents of tire failure in one of the turns at Indy.
While the fans in attendance were understandably livid that they had shelled out all that money for a rare appearance of the Euro premier race circuit only to see six cars run, I think that pulling out was the right thing for michelin and the race itself.

The incident shows one of the problems which dog F1's image in the states: the machines themselves are too technically oriented and essentially cutting edge.
This opposed to Nascar which still uses uses carburetors, for crine out loud.

Indeed it's the technology that came a cropper. The extreme downforce of the finely honed cars coupled with the lateral G Forces of the Indy turn 3 evidently caused the tire beads to pull away from the wheel lip... causing the tire to lose its air.
Bridgestone tires did not have this problem, probably due to different sidewall construction and/or possibly the tire rubber compound and bead strength or flexibility.

I read several articles that suggested that Michelin might take a hit on this but I can see no reason why that would happen.

They did the responsible thing, no reason to go ahead and run just to see all those cars crash out and possible injury or even death resulting.

These tires have next to no relationship with the consumer product with the exception that advances in racing tires have produced tremendously better tires for you and me.
I like Michelin..if I were in the market for the "Best, top of the line" tire it would probably be one of theirs. That said, their low/middle range tires are not so good. But I'm not gonna throw rocks at them.. F1 is a tough application. Note Goodyear quit trying years ago.

But then, I'd rather watch Nascar if i'm gonna watch car racing...the drivers actually have at it!
F1 is essentially a lot of cars concurrently racing for time. Slipstream tactics are a big no-no!

Michelin's race preview press release describes the problems they faced.

 

Yeah, old topic, but I love F1. I'm a huge Formula 1 fan and honestly can't stand Nascar.

It's too bad of the Michelin problem, but their tires just couldn't take transferring from the flat to the banked oval corner at high speeds. But they should have brought a 2nd, harder compound tire as a substitute as rules require, which they didn't.

Just as an update, Michelin refunded everyone's tickets for the race, and will pay for 20,000 tickets to the USGP next year. The FIA found the 7 teams guilty on 2 of 6 accounts, but later dropped the guilty verdicts when it was accepted that the teams didn't race as advised by Michelin. The FIA can't take action against Michelin as they are merely a supplier to the sport. But even though Michelin helped themselves greatly by refunding the tickets, I feel this may still hurt Michelin's F1 future...

Already Formula 1 has hinted they want to return to a 1-tire supplier situation in the future. F1 seems to always favor Ferrari, who happen to use Bridgestone. Already there have been reports that 2 Michelin teams have expressed interest in switching to Bridgestone next year, which reportedly Ferrari doesn't want. Currently Ferrari is the only top contending team using B'stone (Jordan and Minardi don't really count) and they use that excuse as a way to explain their constant testing when all other teams are observing the "agreed upon, but not formal rule" no testing periods.

As to F1 drivers not having at it, it's due to the poor new rules changes which were made to slow the cars down. With the current specs stanards it's difficult to follow closely behind other cars because of the loss of downforce, making it quite hard to pass. I hope they find a solution next year.

I could go on forever about F1 but I'll stop for now. Go JPM and McLaren.

 

RE: Re: US GP: F1 fiasco

Did you see how many NASCAR's blew their tires out this past weekend racing at Indy?

 

I must admit even though I don't care about NASCAR I did see bits of the race and yes it seemed every 3 or 4 laps another car was having tire problems. I blame the overall crappy design of the NASCAR cars for their flat tires.