And a secondary shame on you to the F1 teams running Michelin tires,,,you had choices available which would have allowed you to compete in the race. You should have swapped tires at the first pit-stop opporunity and dealt with the penalties.

(For non F1 fans - Michelin just made a debacle of the US Grand Prix in Indianapolis)

Michelin can't make a tire to handle turn 13 at Indy ? That is friggin' ridiculous. They have budgets in the millions of dollars just to produce tires for F1, not to mention their passenger tire R&D. Just because a couple tires blew out in practice doesn't mean they were all bad either. They could not tell conclusively why the tires failed. Could have been the car setups too. If they just lowered the downforce a bit that could have made all the difference in the world. I'm sure between the team engineers and the tire mfg. they could have come up with a better solution than boycotting the race.

I don't think the FIA or Ecclestone is to blame at all. Why should they compromise the race by slowing down turn 13 with a chicane or allowing the teams to switch all their tires before the race? Rules are rules. If Ferrari came to the race with a bad suspension piece that wouldn't allow them to run at full speed, they wouldn't listen to their request to slow the track down. Bottom line is that Michelin really screwed this one up. I hope their passenger car tire sales suffer for this. They owe the F1 fans a big apology. F1 is just starting to take off in America, and this is a big setback.

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Posted by Will OConnor to Will's semi-regular rant at 6/19/2005 02:22:00 PM