It's the end of an era, but it's not the end of an empire

_Monday, June 20, 2005_

To watch F1. US GP at Indianapolis. I was absolutely flabberghasted when I heard the commentators(more about them later) say the race might be delayed blahblah because of some tyre issue that I was absolutely unaware of. Race went on, parade lap cars were on the grid and formation lap underway no problem it seemed. Until all the Michelin shod cars dived into the pits and leaving 6 cars for the start. Ferrari Jordan Minardi. Any idiot and a half would clearly know at the time this was a pickup of poitns for Ferrari and all they had to do was to drive through 73 laps and it's a 1-2.

Over the course of the race I found out that Michelin tires could not possibly have lasted the whole 73 laps running around turn 13 as it had a bank which was unusual and puts extra weight and pressure onto the left rear tyre and possibly causing a tyre disintegration. There were last minute pleas to install a chicane by Michelin to the FIA to install a chicane at turn 13 to slow down the cars which was quite ludicrous. Which brings me to the main point. Michelin blackmailing the FIA for their own feck up.

The choices Michelin were given by Charlie Whiting:
(a) Slow down
(b) Change tires as necessary (with no penalty if proof was given that it was on grounds of safety)
(c) Use new tires as necessary (with penalty)

Michelin refused them all and went for a ridiculous blackmail.

Surely they did not want an accident, and since they did not choose any of the above 3 solutions, the only thing left was to pull out, which they did. At least they didn't run the tyres normally and hope they don't break.

Installing a chicane as has been indicated downright ludicrous.
(a) on such a short notice, not necessarily any safer
(b) grossly unfair to those with correct tyres
(c) not for Michelin but for FIA to decide

It's a sort of thing, OK, we can't race fast, so find a way to slow down our rivals so we can at least compete with them. How fair.

In addition, I can't for all love understand how some people can still find a way to blame Ferrari for this mess.

Truth is Michelin fecked up BIG TIME and they did not bring in a B spec as normal practice for some ingenious reason.

The race was tehre for the taking for Raikkonen after he qualified second and Alonso in 6th but that was totally smashed by Michelin's unprofessional behaviour.

Just imagine this scenario:
There is an engine supplier that supplies engines for more than half the grid. They come to Indianapolis and after practice, discover several engines blowing because of the longest full throttle straight of the season. Their engineers do the calculations and figure that none of their engines will last the gp, and the only way they will is if they reduce the peak revs so much that their cars become speedbumps for other cars. Their engineers think about it for a bit, and realize that they have created a situation where they can't race. Then one "bright" engineer comes up with a solution. "What if everybody reduced their peak revs substantially?" he asks. Then all of the cars would be on equal footing and our cars could finish the race.

And the yanks who threw bottles at the cars, fuck you idiots, that could have asily lead to someone getting injured or whatever as getting a debris flicked up and over the fence at 330kmh is something very serious indeed.

The race was a procession as expected, Rubens was moaning his arse off about strategy but Schumacher was the guinea pig for the team to check the tires didn;t he notice that, FErrari were thinking of making a tyre change as well.

Brings me to the commentators, Steve Slater and Chris Goodwin were going on about how we can enjoy having a closer look at the Mindaris and Jordans which is bollox, every lockup was replayed 5x for god sake. Stoddart is a hypocrite as well, don;t get me started on ghim, giving the thumbs down in front of cameras, what a twat.

But at the end of the day Michelin has to take the blame and the permutations mgiht well be they get kicked out of F1.

The rulemakers aka FIA need to have a good look at themselves as well, setting such shit rules, always a matter of time as well, get them back to slicks, normal one hour 12 laps qualifying and so on.

Well thats all I have to say about the farce, I seriously doubt anyone would read everything.