Tuesday 21st June 2005

Indianapolis F1: eye-witness report

'In the stands it felt as though they wanted to kill someone.'

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What are these for, again?

Simon Rockman reports from the Indianapolis grandstand on the F1 farce

I was there, and it was bizarre.

The stands seem to fill in sections with a particular allegiance, the Columbians for Montoya and so on. I was with a crowd of Indians backing Narain Karthikeyan, so they weren’t sure what to make of their man being in the points, but this soon changed to near-riot. It was odd being in among such anger and it not feeling dangerous.

One huge difference between Indianapolis and any other circuit is scale. Everywhere else that F1 goes it’s the biggest event held at the circuit. Indianapolis is built for the 300,000 people that attend the Indianapolis 500 so there is no overcrowding for the 100,000 or so F1 fans. Some of the souvenir stands don’t even open for the small F1 race. This scale helped in diffusing the emotion. It would have been very different at Monza.

There was a chronic lack of information, I’d spoken to a friend at one of the teams around 9am and he’d said that they still didn’t have any tyres, but that he couldn’t see the race not happening.

I did think it a little strange that Bernie spent so much time on the grid talking to Minardi boss Paul Stoddart, and I said to my friend that I was pleased we moved from turn 13 to the start-finish straight because I didn’t feel safe at the turn, but these things only come into focus with hindsight.

I’d seen the story on the BBC Web site saying that the race was going ahead, and the atmosphere was great. There was a feeling that F1, was, at last, coming to America.

For a lot of people I spoke to before the race it was their first experience of F1. I guess it will be their last.

The mailman in front of me had driven 1,000 miles from Texas. We chatted about how it was unusual for a Black American to be interested in F1. The Indians next to me had flown from North Carolina. If F1 had a toehold it was that motorsport in the US is so redneck  the ethnic minorities avoid it.

Of course that toehold is gone. If F1 cars can’t even do 73 laps with one fast turn when Indy cars to hundreds with four it makes F1 look pretty feeble. Perhaps I would have been better advised not to have used the jibe about roundy-roundy racing being “a girls sport”.

Mass hysteria is an odd thing. The unison of 100,000 people stamping and shouting “Bullshit” was almost carnival. Those that watched on TV and deplore the throwing of the pint sized Foster cans should try to appreciate the fervor that I thought was going to lead to a track invasion.

In the stands it felt as though they wanted to kill someone.

In the pits it was as though someone had died.

With nothing to do expect half pack-up my friend got me into the paddock. Where teams usually crowd around flat screens showing the race and telemetry information there were packing cases being filled. The photographers were stalking Bernie and not the drivers. A crowd emerged from an hospitality suite to shout at F1’s Davros and he fixed each one of them with a stare.

The Ferrari team tried hard at the podium, but their cheers were drowned by the crowd’s jeers.

Rumours started flying around the pit of how dangerous it was to leave. Apparently a cameraman had been attacked. There were a thousand angry people at the administration building. The BAR team changed out of uniform just in case.  Drivers were given police motorcycle escorts as they left.

They say that in war there are no winners, the same was true at Indianapolis. But perhaps the most worrying thing for F1 in the US was the non-ironic comment from a colleague in the office on Monday morning when I said I’d been to the race: “what race?”.

[jpf]

I was there and can't add much more to the comment.

I will be curious to see how this plays out.

Michelin and Formula One need to quickly and positively address the issue of how to make the supporters (fans, sponsors, Speed Channel) whole. They put on a sham event and now need to work extremely hard to re-establish themselves. 5 years of hard work have been lost at the USGP.