Motorsport Off Topic Thread

Michelin have always said that they won't do a single tyre championship as they see F1 as a method for tyre development and competition gives them that.
 
JRS said:
Well, you would need an alternative supplier just in case....
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I always find it funny when that one gets dragged up! Michelin get a bit of unfair stick TBH....

The track had been resurfaced (diamond cutting IIRC) and that effected the tyres. Bridgestone only knew about this as, through the Firestone brand, they had raced tyres on this new surface. Michelin arrived to the Grand Prix and discovered this too late to do anything about it. Then the controversy that we all know happened.
 
It's not the screw-up in the first place that I find irritating about Michelin and that weekend, though that was pretty unforgivable since they did know that the track had been diamond-cut* and should have known to alter their construction accordingly even if that meant going conservative. It was their utter refusal to come to a workable solution.

The options they presented IIRC were the following:

1) Let us fly in replacement tyres - can't do that, otherwise what's to stop Bridgestone bringing in a qualifying special tyre and then fly in race rubber afterwards?
2) Build a chicane to reduce speeds through the final turn - can't really do that either, since it denies the Bridgestone teams the advantage that they deserved by having slower, more durable rubber. And besides, building a chicane there might have changed the forces on the tyres such that they fail somewhere else on the track.

The other options open to them:

1) Just go slower through the turn in question - easily workable. It was said that this would be too dangerous - I seem to recall it working okay in '03 when the rain began to fall and the Bridgestone dry tyres dropped off before the Michelins. On that occasion, Michael Schumacher in his Ferrari took a wider line through the turn, Michelin cars blasted past him on the inside. Simple.
2) Pit to change rubber as and when the Michelin tyres wear out, and take a penalty post-race.

But no. Instead, all the Michelin teams pull in after the parade lap. And then people wonder why the US fell out with GP racing until very recently....


* - of course, it's not just Michelin who got caught out by a track doing that. Goodyear screwed up a few years back for a NASCAR Cup race at Vegas with the resulting carnage still talked about now, and on a few other occasions as well. Hell, last weekend at Michigan they had to change the tyre construction after practice revealed a bit of an issue.
 
it's one thing to have a difference in speed of 20-30MPH. It's another completely to have closing speeds of 100MPH as could have happened at Indy.

michelin even agreed that only the michelin cars would use the chicane but at least the fans would see all the cars but the FIA (and probably Ferrari too) said no so michelin did the only thing they could and said they couldn't guarantee the safety of the tyres and recommended to the teams not to race. The FIA could easily have said to michelin 'Sure fly in tyres to make a race but your teams will score no points' for the sake of all cars on track but typically they said no (again probably Ferrari got involved) so the debacle happened and michelin cars pulled off and the US GP hasn't happened since.

I will also refer to the WSBK Pirelli wet tyre screw-up at monza last month. Pirelli told the riders to use intermediates on a drying track with some wet patches but most riders went for wets and they overheated and delaminated almost completely on the dry, high speed sections. Pirelli's fault or the riders for 'knowing better' or not listening?
 
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MissChief said:
it's one thing to have a difference in speed of 20-30MPH. It's another completely to have closing speeds of 100MPH as could have happened at Indy.
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Would the speeds have been that different? I'm not so sure. But even if they were - drivers in endurance races all over the world deal with that sort of speed differential quite a lot, and most of the time it doesn't end in disaster.

MissChief said:
michelin even agreed that only the michelin cars would use the chicane but at least the fans would see all the cars but the FIA (and probably Ferrari too) said no
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Ferrari weren't even invited to most of the meetings that weekend. And come on - putting a chicane in that only some teams would use, a workable solution? Hardly.

MissChief said:
so michelin did the only thing they could and said they couldn't guarantee the safety of the tyres and recommended to the teams not to race.
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Of course they could have raced. If they didn't want to drive at reduced speed through the turn, then they just had to change tyres during the race and take the resulting penalty.

MissChief said:
The FIA could easily have said to michelin 'Sure fly in tyres to make a race but your teams will score no points' for the sake of all cars on track but typically they said no (again probably Ferrari got involved) so the debacle happened and michelin cars pulled off
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Like I said, Ferrari hadn't been invited to many of the meetings pre-'race'.

MissChief said:
and the US GP hasn't happened since.
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You know, I could have sworn there was this motor race that happened back in 2006, now what was it called....oh yes, the 2006 United States Grand Prix. Would have thought it was quite a memorable one, what with all those cars going off in the first two turns ;)
 
The tyres weren't just wearing too quickly, they were failing at high speeds. You make it sound as if the tyres were just wearing out more than usual. This puts solution #2 out the window, and leaves you with the ridiculous situation of having a set of cars on the outside doing <100mph, and another set a few feet away doing 200mph. That's a mental idea, and they're quite right for not doing it.

A chicane on the track is equally as daft, but what's so wrong with letting them fly in a different tyre? It's a one off, just because Mich are allowed to change a tyre which is prone to failing for one which isn't, doesn't suddenly mean Bridgestone are going to start doing it every weekend. I believe that the Mich teams also offered not to score any championship points in this scenario, but as usual the FIA are anti logic and sense. I don't hold Michelin responsible, Bridgestone race at Indy in the 500, so obviously had a lot more data on the surface. Fair enough they were caught with their trousers down, but the FIA and their refusal to compromise left F1 with an embarassing grand prix that killed F1 in the US (at least until this year, maybe).

Also, it's not just F1 that screwed up, Nascar had an embarassing race at Indy also, where the tyres were failing after 20 laps. I believe it was 2008.
 
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deko said:
but what's so wrong with letting them fly in a different tyre?
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Because what's to stop Bridgestone then rocking up at, say, Hungary (a track at which overtaking tends to be difficult) with some qualifying specials and then once their teams are filling the front grid slots saying 'er, sorry FIA, can we fly some new tyres in pretty please, we done screwed the pooch'? Yeah, they aren't going to do it every weekend. But it still sets a bad, bad precedent.

Michelin knew that the track surface had been cut. They may not have had race data, but someone at the company will have watched the race even if it was just the tea boy. Being a tyre company with extensive competition experience, they would have had the imagination to work out what that would do to their tyres. They could have rocked up at Indy with a conservative, slow-but-steady tyre and probably still beaten the Ferraris to the flag given how slow the Bridgestones were that season. But no, can't do that. Gotta push the envelope.

F1Rejects had one of the better ideas in their post ****-up review:

Jamie and Enoch said:
As far as their suggestions went, they never came close to going far enough. If they had gone further down the track of inventing imaginative solutions, how about this: insert a chicane, Bridgestone runners only to take the grid, Michelin runners eligible for points (i.e. they are eligible competitors), but starting from the pit lane after 5 laps, i.e. automatic five lap penalty. That would assure the Bridgestone runners of the top six places, on the track and in the points, subject to incidents and retirements.

Why make the Michelin runners eligible for points? Firstly, although it meant that they could take points off the Bridgestone teams, eligibility for points equates to eligibility to compete. How stiff would it be for a Bridgestone user to be taken out by a Michelin runner who, by being ineligible for points, was essentially ineligible to participate? Secondly, had the Michelin teams accepted the FIA's suggestion of going slower through Turn 13 or repeatedly changing tyres, they would still have been able to score points.

This creative solution of the chicane plus 5 lap penalty for Michelin teams would have replicated as best as possible the conditions had those 14 cars gone slower through Turn 13 by conferring onto them the necessary disadvantage. The nature of the event would remain: 20 cars, all eligible for points, all susceptible to the vagaries that a Grand Prix could throw up (e.g. being taken out by a backmarker), but the result would be made to reflect as far as possible the hindrance Michelin's awful error had brought to their teams.

Clearly, none of the Michelin teams were prepared to go that far. On the contrary, they had the gumption to send their cars to the dummy grid before pulling them in after the warm-up lap. Maybe it was a split-second decision under the confusion of it all, but later on they said that it was so that the fans could at least see the cars, which made it sound premeditated. What deception in the extreme! If they weren't going to race, then they were better off not going to the grid at all.

The grid would then have had two, four, maybe six cars only, and the visual spectre of such a limited field might have caused all parties to reach some kind of eleventh hour agreement. By giving the impression that they would race, then calling them in after the formation lap, they left the stewards at a point of no return. There was no way of aborting or postponing the start any more. It had to go ahead with just the six cars, spread out over the grid, instead of being bunched into the first three rows.
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If you have to put a chicane in, that's the way to handle it. Though you have to wonder what hard acceleration through Turn 13 would do to those suspect Michelins....I suspect something rather similar to running through there at full speed!

deko said:
Also, it's not just F1 that screwed up, Nascar had an embarassing race at Indy also, where the tyres were failing after 20 laps. I believe it was 2008.
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Yeah, I believe I already pointed that one out....

JRS said:
* - of course, it's not just Michelin who got caught out by a track doing that. Goodyear screwed up a few years back for a NASCAR Cup race at Vegas with the resulting carnage still talked about now, and on a few other occasions as well. Hell, last weekend at Michigan they had to change the tyre construction after practice revealed a bit of an issue.
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Does anyone on here actually read what I type? :p
 
deko said:
The tyres weren't just wearing too quickly, they were failing at high speeds. You make it sound as if the tyres were just wearing out more than usual. This puts solution #2 out the window, and leaves you with the ridiculous situation of having a set of cars on the outside doing <100mph, and another set a few feet away doing 200mph. That's a mental idea, and they're quite right for not doing it.

A chicane on the track is equally as daft, but what's so wrong with letting them fly in a different tyre? It's a one off, just because Mich are allowed to change a tyre which is prone to failing for one which isn't, doesn't suddenly mean Bridgestone are going to start doing it every weekend. I believe that the Mich teams also offered not to score any championship points in this scenario, but as usual the FIA are anti logic and sense. I don't hold Michelin responsible, Bridgestone race at Indy in the 500, so obviously had a lot more data on the surface. Fair enough they were caught with their trousers down, but the FIA and their refusal to compromise left F1 with an embarassing grand prix that killed F1 in the US (at least until this year, maybe).

Also, it's not just F1 that screwed up, Nascar had an embarassing race at Indy also, where the tyres were failing after 20 laps. I believe it was 2008.
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This. The logical solutions, which did not give Michelin any unfair advantage for their mistake, was to either have a Michelin tyres only chicane (to slow them down), or to let them fly out new tyres - and in both solutions for Michelin cars to not score world championship points.


The FIA, and anyone influencing their decision (Ferrari/Bridgestone?) came out from the whole thing in a very bad light.
 
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