RE: Indianapolis F1: eye-witness report
Discussion
Just read the Mosley Q&A on the Autocar news page - despite the fact that he is a knob, he does raise a good point - why did none of the Michelin teams elect to use the pit lane instead of turn 13? This would have provided the 'slow down' that they needed, would not have disadvantaged the Bridgestone runners, and would have allowed them to race for championship points. Granted it may have looked a little silly, but certainly not as daft as the farce of only 6 cars on the track.
Anyone got any ideas?
Anyone got any ideas?
Max Nazi is quoting safety as the reason for not allowing a chiance and suggesting the pit lane or motoring slowly around Turn 13.
How is Herr Mosely, who wasn't there better placed to say what is safe than Tony George who owns the circuit and was all for putting the chicane in.
Simon
How is Herr Mosely, who wasn't there better placed to say what is safe than Tony George who owns the circuit and was all for putting the chicane in.
Simon
mattmurdock said:
Just read the Mosley Q&A on the Autocar news page - despite the fact that he is a knob, he does raise a good point - why did none of the Michelin teams elect to use the pit lane instead of turn 13? This would have provided the 'slow down' that they needed, would not have disadvantaged the Bridgestone runners, and would have allowed them to race for championship points. Granted it may have looked a little silly, but certainly not as daft as the farce of only 6 cars on the track.
Anyone got any ideas?
Yep.
Mosley has clearly lost the entire plot.
As already said that would surely be more dangerous than any of the other ideas.
I cannot imagine the onboard control systems and the cars would appreciate 70 odd visits through the pit lane.
The Bridgestone runners would still be disadvantaged when they had their pit stops with so many other cars going through every lap.
The Schumacher/Barrichello pit exit/turn one incident would presumably have been just one of many as a gaggle of cars fought for position on leaving the pit lane.
Etc., Etc.
BUT, more than any of that, the whole exercise would have looked even more ludicrous lap after lap after lap and for no purpose whatsoever.
Or maybe Mosley is just too pre-occupied with other things these days.
www.fiafoundation.com/policy/mobility/policy_monitor/pm_14012005.html
I suspect the desire that FIA/FIA Foundation/ EuroNcap/Etc. has to take a lead in road safety, traffic management and ecology of transport throughout the EU (and the rest of the world if it can) takes precedence over the need to manage an international motor sport series successfully.
You may need to go looking but there are a number of interesting items to be found in the news and policy monitoring sections below the main headings on the FIA Foundation site.
Edit to add.
Suddenly occured to me that the other teams could have run very light, topping up the tanks for say 10 laps at a time. Could have provided a lot of overtaking around the back of the circuit as the Michelin runners carved through the Bridgestone boys. Of course that assumes that the Michelin runners would have been able to keep the tyre and brake temperatures up as they drove through the pit lane ...
>> Edited by LongQ on Friday 24th June 19:22
kevinday said:
david_s said:
Why do people keep blaming Ferrari? They turned with suitable tyres and raced. They did not veto any suggestion put forward by the teams or Michelin, The FIA did this.
Err nope, Ferrari refused to compromise in any way, refused to allow the chicane in particular.
There have been conflicting reports, but the consensus of opinion would seem to indicate that the decision was taken by the FIA without consulting Ferrari. Frank Williams has gone on record to say that Ferrari were blameless, and Jean Todt stated that although he would not have agreed to the chicane he was not asked to do so.
At worst you could accuse Ferrari of not being part of a solution, although I suspect that even if they had been consulted and accepted a chicane it would still have been vetoed by the FIA.
It amazes me that Ferrari are once again blamed for a problem not of their making, while Michelin, who's negligence caused the debacle, are hardly mentioned. Michelin gambled on tyre compounds/construction to gain an advantage and lost, they where then unwilling to accept the humiliation of seeing their cars run behind the competition and so caused the withdrawal of their teams.
It is nonsense to suggest that racing drivers could not be expected to run less than 100% flat out round turn 13, they do such things all the time. For example they often run slow in the early laps when heavy on fuel to protect their tyres, and also reduce speed towards the end of the race to 'bring the car home'. This is what the Michelin teams should have done - run as fast as their tyres allowed them.
Edited to correct some grammatical errors and expand upon my argument.
>> Edited by david_s on Monday 27th June 13:39
One question (I didnt see the race, as was at Le Mans). Why ddint sa few of the michelin cars start, but go slowly throuhg Turn 13? They would'nt have caught the Ferraris, but should be quick enough around the rest opf the track to keep ahead of the Jordan/ Minardi, and get a guaranteed 3rd place/ 4th place?
williamp said:
One question (I didnt see the race, as was at Le Mans). Why ddint sa few of the michelin cars start, but go slowly throuhg Turn 13? They would'nt have caught the Ferraris, but should be quick enough around the rest opf the track to keep ahead of the Jordan/ Minardi, and get a guaranteed 3rd place/ 4th place?
To the several who have suggested this.
How slowly should they run in order to be sure that the tyres would last the race distance without some form of major incident involving, well, who knows - a passing world champion perhaps?
If you know can you tell Michelin because I think it is reasonable to assume that they could not tell anyone with any degree of certainty.
How would you re-program the systems with no running allowed?
And in the end it would still be a non-race to all intents and purposes - just less honest, IMHO, than what actually happened.
No matter whether Michelin screwed up or not (and I think that is debatable based on the information about the revised surface if that was not available to them) I really don't think you can ask anyone, drivers or team principles, to accept a hugely increased risk under any circumstances. As a Bridgestone driver I don't think I would want to be driving around with 14 other cars which might have a shunt at any moment or throw great chunks of rubber at me as I try to pass.
Next you'll be suggesting they should run the Indy 500 when its raining.
If Bridgestone had had the problem it would have mattered less - only 3 teams and 2 of them not competitive. Embarrassing but survivable.
Maybe the FIA should do more in terms of ensuring that all the organisations involved are fully aware of any changes to previously used tracks where testing is not allowed. Do they do that?
Here was a problem that required a compromise
williamp said:
One question (I didnt see the race, as was at Le Mans). Why ddint sa few of the michelin cars start, but go slowly throuhg Turn 13? They would'nt have caught the Ferraris, but should be quick enough around the rest opf the track to keep ahead of the Jordan/ Minardi, and get a guaranteed 3rd place/ 4th place?
1. It would be extremely dangerous to be on a track with speed diferentials of near 100mph.
2. These guys are racing drivers and simply would not want to slow down for the corners, in the end they wouldn't, Bang, a tyre goes and possibly a serious injury.
LongQ said:
To the several who have suggested this.
How slowly should they run in order to be sure that the tyres would last the race distance without some form of major incident involving, well, who knows - a passing world champion perhaps?
If you know can you tell Michelin because I think it is reasonable to assume that they could not tell anyone with any degree of certainty.
I assume that Michelin did know as were prepared to race with a chicane added to slow the cars. This must have been based upon some technical assessment surely?
And as for being debateable about whether Michelin screwed up or not, you cannot be serious! This was a major league cock up, if they were not aware of the track surface conditions then they certainly should have been. If they did not send engineers to assess the track surface then they should have done, and if they did not carry out pre-race simulations (not on the circuit as that wasn't allowed) then again, they should have.
I accept the fact that Bridgestone had an advantage because of their Firestone connections, this might explain a performance advantage but not the in-ability of the Michelin tyres to complete the race, after all the Firestone tyres did not fail in the earlier race did they?
Had Michelin supplied two sets of uncompetitive tyres that would have been unfortunate, but to supply two sets of tyres that were both too dangerous to use could be considered negligent.
Just to prove what a complete head case mosley is here are a few quotes from a recent interveiw,
"But the governing body will always win. So I'm not concerned if they take an antagonistic line. What are they going to do? If they go on strike, they're simply cutting off their nose to spite their face. That won't happen."
He will always win will he?
"They were incredibly stupid because there are no winners in a situation like this - except the American lawyers. It was crazy," said Mosley.
"I felt intense irritation because I also suspected the tyre problem was not as grave as they represented.
"I felt the situation had been created artificially and deliberately."
Obviously becuase the teams flew all the way out to Indy so they could fake a tyre problem. And obviously they filled Ralfs tyre with explosives so it blew up to give them a good excuse. Yeah thats what I always thought.
I reckon as the tyres are so safe someone should offer Mr. Mosley a few laps of Indy in an F1 car with the Michelin tyres on. I wonder what he would say?
Edited - Cant spell
>> Edited by NightDriver on Monday 27th June 15:59
"But the governing body will always win. So I'm not concerned if they take an antagonistic line. What are they going to do? If they go on strike, they're simply cutting off their nose to spite their face. That won't happen."
He will always win will he?
"They were incredibly stupid because there are no winners in a situation like this - except the American lawyers. It was crazy," said Mosley.
"I felt intense irritation because I also suspected the tyre problem was not as grave as they represented.
"I felt the situation had been created artificially and deliberately."
Obviously becuase the teams flew all the way out to Indy so they could fake a tyre problem. And obviously they filled Ralfs tyre with explosives so it blew up to give them a good excuse. Yeah thats what I always thought.
I reckon as the tyres are so safe someone should offer Mr. Mosley a few laps of Indy in an F1 car with the Michelin tyres on. I wonder what he would say?
Edited - Cant spell
>> Edited by NightDriver on Monday 27th June 15:59
david_s said:
I assume that Michelin did know as were prepared to race with a chicane added to slow the cars. This must have been based upon some technical assessment surely?
It's one thing to make a call about the potential for reducing the scale of a problem by taking a specific action and quite another to to understand why the problem existed in the first place.
So yes, I guess they could be reasonably sure that the reduced speed would result in differences that would mean the sidewall (or whatever) would not give way disastrously, though it may exhibit, and report via telemetry, signs of impending failure. That is not the same as understanding why it was happening.
I understand that they reported that the simulations with the Barcelona tyres - supposedly designed with stronger sidewalls than normal - also indicated potential problems.
So exactly what do you do?
david_s said:
And as for being debateable about whether Michelin screwed up or not, you cannot be serious! This was a major league cock up, if they were not aware of the track surface conditions then they certainly should have been. If they did not send engineers to assess the track surface then they should have done, and if they did not carry out pre-race simulations (not on the circuit as that wasn't allowed) then again, they should have.
In what timescale? How far ahead? And indeed are they allowed to do the checking?
But whichever way you look it the decision on the day has to be based on what solution is available. In this case it would appear there was no safe solution to be agreed.
david_s said:
I accept the fact that Bridgestone had an advantage because of their Firestone connections, this might explain a performance advantage but not the in-ability of the Michelin tyres to complete the race, after all the Firestone tyres did not fail in the earlier race did they?
Not quite sure what you are saying here.
david_s said:
Had Michelin supplied two sets of uncompetitive tyres that would have been unfortunate, but to supply two sets of tyres that were both too dangerous to use could be considered negligent.
Well on the basis that they will have variations of design, construction and compound BUT there would normally be some continuity of design or else testing and use would simply result in a lottery, if the only other tyre they had available was also likely to fail there was clearly a specific problem that was abnormal.
Their tyres worked OK last year at the same track (before resurface work and then the additional work to provide some grip) one assumes.
They have also worked on all the other tracks visited to far this year - though possibly marginal at Barcelona, mainly due to flat spotting under braking it would seem. And if the design, sans major alteration, works at the rest of the circuits for the rest of the year (remember the caveats there) then it would suggest something specific about Indy that may mean a revision of the rules about tyre testing would be sensible.
Whatever I really don't see that they could put together a safe race as things were. And an knowingly unsafe race would have been worse than what we saw.
Presumably the truth, or something close to it, will see the light at some point.
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