Motors The Official bit-tech Formula 1 2005 Season Thread!

The sad thing is, that was the only action in the whole race. The rest was damn boring. And yes, I too feel sorry for the 3rd place guy, who was very pleased with his first podium, but everyone in the crowds was boo'ing.

I guess this will shake the FIA and F1 as a whole, up. Michelin are partly to blame, and I see them dropping out of F1 altogether, and the teams migrating to just the one tyre company. At least it will eliminate the teams blaming their tyres for poor performance.

 

Didn't he say that he was 100% confident that all the cars would be on the grid and I suppose they were. I don't care about the regulations they should have just let all 10 teams have new tyres or just install the chicane. The FIA are always on the side of Ferarri and its just becoming stupid now.

Did anyone watch the touring cars that was on before the GP, now that was great racing!

 

An absolute farce, a day of shame for F1. Michelin, the FIA, Bernie Ecclestone, and the rest of the teams (especially Ferrari) need to take a long hard look at their own conduct and what they could have done to make sure there was still a real race today. It won't happen though, they'll only carry on as usual, bickering like children and trying to blame everyone else for what is a collective failure to reach an agreement.

I felt sorry for the drivers today, so obviously many of them were frustrated with it all, but most of all I feel sorry for the fans who paid good money for their tickets and travel/accomodation. F1 is not a cheap sport to watch by any means, and today it hardly counted as a sport to my eyes, it was a total disgrace.

Indeed, I'd love to see F1 at somewhere like Road Atlanta

 

I *always* watch the British touring cars! TC's ROCK! so much better action in short bursts. I also much enjoy the WRC (rally) which is on next week

 

I think Ferarri should be ashamed of themselves, taking 16 easy points, rather than making the sporting guesture of standing by the other teams.
If Ferarri had stood by the Michelin teams something would have been done to resolve this farce before it happened.

 

Have 2 points to make on this (which will probably get me linched but meh
Firstly, it was Michelins fault that the tyres failed, not the FIA's, Bridgestones, Mclarens, or bob the builder sat in the crowd. Why should the FIA have to bend the rules because the tyres wouldnt last the race distance? Bridgestone managed it without a problem. Did Michelin not forsee the problem the new surface might well cause? It wasnt even as if the tyres lasted 3/4 distance, 15 laps seemed to be about the max they could manage.
The FIA IMHO acted the only way they could. If they'd allowed the teams to change to the new tyres how would they be sure these would last? If the chicane had been built, the car setups would require change. Plus NONE of the drivers had EVER raced the new layout circuit, it would have been in-practical to add a chicane at such short notice. IF this had been discussed and implemented before qualli then maybe this would have been a viable solution, but not 50 mintues before the race start.
Another point, why should Ferrari (or any other team) be disadvantaged because of someone else's mistake? If say, Bridgestone had a GREAT tyre, but it quite often failed within the last 5 laps, would all the Michelin runners agree to cut the race 10 laps short? Or to go slow on the last laps to ensure the Bridgestone shod teams didnt crash? Highly unlikely. Why should they agree to a chicane? It wouldnt do them any favours at all.

However having said that, the fans were fleeced today. It was indeed a sad day for F1. While IMHO the right decision for the situation was made, the right decision for F1 and its future was not. Far FAR too much red tape and politics were invloved. The FIA are the governing body, and while they were abiding by the "rules" in this case maybe an alternative solution benefitting all parties could have been agreed. They had 24-36 hours maybe more to rectify the problem, but discussions were still being made right up to the GP's start.
Clear cut plans for situations such as this need to be implemented to ensure this does not occur again.
On the plus point, the championship is now wide open once more, 3 drivers are in the hunt for the championship. Could make for some interesting races in the near future. Lets hope that F1 can get on with racing, learning from the lessons learnt today.

 

From a racing point on view why should they? The proposed Chicane would have adversely affected them. The FIA were to blame for not allowing teams to run the new tyres (which may or may not have worked) had the new tyres been allowed, then the situation may not have arrisen.
From an F1/fan point of view, yes, Ferrari should have stood with the other Michelin teams. BUT Jordan and Minardi also raced, surely this tars them with the same brush, as they too were on the look out for some easy points.....
On the plus as mentioned above, the world championship is now wide open again, with 3 drivers in contention...

 

Thing is I do actually agree with you Andi, it was soley the fault of Michelin for not providing a tyre suitable for the new track, but this being a sport a compromise should have been found.
An offer I believe was made to allow all teams to race, with the new chicane included, where the Michelin runners would score no points but a race would still have went ahead for the sake of the fans, but the FIA rejected the idea.

The whole thing was just wrong, all teams should have raced, and a solution should have been found, they were aware of the problem the day before, so a practice session in the morning on the new layout would have allowed the drivers to familiarise themselves with the track.

 

Anyway, GO KIMI!

 

Wasnt aware of the Michelin drivers not scoring points. Would have been kinda pointless for them to have raced though tbh. As Ferrari would still have picked up the 16 points (unless points were given on actual finishing positions, ie MS finishes 2nd to kimi, kimi gets 0 but ms gets 8). Would have given us a race though, or maybe not as would the teams even have bothered?

Totally agree! The future of F1 (and michelins place) has been put into question. Who exactly is running the show, and why didnt they sort things out! its not like time was a problem...

Really hope the new 2008 rule changes actually make it to F1. Or in fact if F1 as we know it makes it to the rule changes...

 

A few people have mentioned 16 points for Ferrari, unless I'm very much mistaken it was 18 points! This puts Ferrari into 2nd place in the Constructors' Championship and Michael (pact with Devil) Schumacher right up there with Kimi in the Drivers' Championship.

The point allocation was changed this season (or last) to make it harder for a team to seal the Championship overly early and to keep things closer between all the drivers. It's now 1st=10, 2nd=8, 3rd=6, 4th=5, 5th=4, 6th=3, 7th=2, 8th=1. The 8 vs 6 place points make it easier for the lower teams to score points which helps financially via rewards and sponsership (the main sources of revenue for teams since Bernie & the FIA pocket all the real cash).

And therein lies the problem. The whole reason tire changes weren't allowed (except for safety reasons, HELLO) was to reduce running costs for the teams. Also (ironically) the vast majority of teams abandoned Bridgestone because they were blatently giving Ferrari special treatment & testing, that's why there's only 3 teams using Bridgestone. Speaking of which their ad really makes me laugh, "The moment victory is secured we ..." Ferrari's relatively poor perf this season is largely put down to the Bridgestone tyres and IIRC they've only won this one race where only 2 other (very slow) teams ran! Bridgestone obviously came up with that ad last season when Ferrari were still mighty.

Rem the FIA questionairre for fans; "How do we make F1 better?" ... easy you are already reducing downforce, grip and making the cars slower so IMHO you should make them more durable (so they can tap each other) and while you're at it why not make them look more like real road cars again? The only reason they won't do it is because it would actually be Touring Cars and no longer F1 LOL!

As Bindibadgi said this Indy circuit was not designed with F1 in mind at all, it's really bad for F1 with unchallenging corners, an overly long top speed section and huge killer concrete wall on one side of the pit straight which badly injured Ralf Schumacher (the one who hasn't made a pact with the Devil) last year.

What confused the hell out of me was the people in the stands blaming it on the Michellin runners! They wanted to race but were forced into using unsafe tires on what was (for them) a very unsafe track. Unsafe due to the wierd gradient, strange diamond cut surface and the overly long top speed section which terminates next to a huge concrete wall! Just look at what happened to Ralf (this year) and Kimmi last race, exploding tires are very dangerous esp at this insane Indy track.

It seems clear putting in a new last minute chicane was not a viable option but even a group of 5 year olds could have reached a united resolution to enable more cars to take to the track (no offence to 5 year olds). It seems just enabling the tires to be changed to the ones Michellin deemed safe was the best course of action, and it could have been done under the grounds of safety. Let them race for pride with no points (as was offered), promote the Bridgstone runners, demote the Michellin runners, give penalties to the Michellin runners (start in the pit lane or serve drive through penalties) or even simply deal with repremands later (such as disqualifying all Michellin runner's results). All options, all blatently obvious and logical options ... surely?

 

just on a random side note, what makes me laugh is that the tires, or tire cost is a very small percentage of the f1 car as a whole...new regulations are good and whatnot, but trying to cut down spending of a team by enforcing these regulations seem like a daft idea, as they could try looking at where the real dollars go....

but then again, what am i talking about? smashing up cf gearboxes at mclaren was great fun, and such a good use of money

 

I'm not at all a F1 Fan. But saw on the news that only 6 out of 20 cars got to drive. Because of the tires.

I must say that I was shocked, they they didn't drive because of bad tires. Its a milti-million dollar business, so it must be a very huge risk if the don't drive.

Good call imo.

L

 

At the end of the day its a sport first, entertainment second and i dam well hope it stays that way!

Its like Liverpool turning up the the champions league final with only 10 men and then demanding that the other team should have 10 men too.

 

must say when i flicked over to watch the race i was shocked to see them go round "grand turismo 6 cars a race" style.
personally i think its a totally Michelin's fault, for the reasons mentioned above, and i do actually think the right thing happened. bridgestone teams shouldn't have to pay for the mistakes of others, because in the end they are there to race. its not meant 2 be entertainment, its meant to be racing, and things like that happen in racing.

i think f1 should look at the things motogp are doing, because at the moment motogp is just absolutely unbelievably amazing, unlike f1 which has been getting more boring over the last 2 years race by race.

 

Yeah that would be me, I've been watching F1 for over 20years, and still can't get it into my head that the scoring system changed.

 

why did all the michelin teams go out for the formation lap?
surely if none of them had gone out the race would have been abandoned (too few cars) and they wouldn't have lost the points to Ferrari, Jordan and Minardi.

 

Well somewhere in the regulations it states that there must be at least 12 cars eligible to race otherwise the race may be called off, I assume it had already been discussed that the race would go on. I imagine the teams decided to go on the formation lap and then retire to at least show they were there with working cars willing to race. Minardi actually said they would retire their cars along with the Michellin runners but their main rivals Jordan refused claiming they wanted the points and believed they could beat both Minardi cars and make the podium. Ferrari couldn't care less about anything other than winning as they haven't won yet this season (?). They reportedly weren't involved in any meetings and ignored everything to do with the Michellin situation as they just wanted to race since their tires were fine.

It hasn't been only the last 2 years that F1 had become stale, more like 8 or more. It's at its least interesting when just 1 team clearly have the most superior package, as we saw a little from McLaren just before Ferrari's 4/5 year unrelenting stint at the top. Even when there's quite a few teams competing for the win, the way an F1 car has evolved means it's very hard to overtake and on some tracks almost completely impossible. This is why they've been changing regulations such as decreasing downforce and having to keep the same tires all weekend. Things have improved esp this year and F1 had begun to become more popular again, until this woeful Indy business.

As for the football analogy it's more like this. The game's on Sunday. In Friday's training session Team_1 discover their boots are dangerous both to them and the opposition on this particular astroturf used only at Team_2's stadium. FIFA pocket most of the money in the sport leaving little for the teams so in order to reduce running costs they made new rules that state the footware must last the whole weekend (unless safety is clearly at risk). The makers of Team_1's shoes fly over a bunch of new shoes which are declared as safe but FIFA make Team_1 practice Saturday's training session in the old dangerous boots which should be safe for a 20-30min training session, just not for the whole match. Using the new boots or laying a new pitch surface would clearly resolve the issue and allow the game to continue. Using the new boots would present some diffulties for Team_1 because they haven't had any time to practice in these new boots. There's a large meeting called after Saturday's training session but noone's told the outcome.

On Sunday (day of the match) it's clear the pitch won't be resurfaced as FIFA say it would be unfair on Team_2 who have boots which work fine on the surface. Team_1 offer to play without boots, to pay any penalties or just play for pride and the sake of the fans. ie. Play the match but Team_2 automatically get all 3 points. Just before the match (like 5 minutes) it's decided that Team_1 will just have to go out on to the pitch in their old boots but risk getting severely injured. Team_1 go out, stand for their national anthems and then as the ref is about to blow for kick-off Team_1 leave the pitch. Team_2 continue anyway for the full 90 minutes, just having a kick about and scoring in the empty net. For some reason the fans don't like this, that includes the 40,000 in the stadium (who paid good money) and the millions watching it on TV around the world. Most of the fans in the stadium blame the boot manufacturer or (stupidly) Team_1 for not playing and just getting injured.

The only major problem with that analogy is that we'd need to have at least 4 teams on the pitch playing some wierd version of the game with 4 goals and 2 balls (like at school). Finally 3 out of the 4 teams use these faulty boots.

 

sorry... "pact with devil" ?

As far as I have ever seen, michael has only done one thing wrong, where he ran an other car off the tracks a few years ago, which he was punished for! Other than that he's a damned fine driver who has had the benefit to work for a team who has a fantastic car most of the time. It won't have been his choice to drive yesterday, it would have been the teams choice, he works for them, and don't forget that!

Also dont forget that 2 (3?) other teams drove, dont forget to insult them profusele for turning up to do what there payed to. To try and entertain a crowd that payed $85 each to see a race. To fill the hours of air time hundreds of TV Station have allotted to the race from all around the world, for their hundreds of millionsof fans to watch.

Im not saying what happened was good but i don't think insulting the drivers who risk life and limb to race every week, is a very constructive way to contribute.

 

I visited Indy last November and took the tour, we weren't allowed onto the oval as it was being resurfaced so we saw Gasoline Alley and drove on part of the F1 circuit. Was pretty cool... even with no racing cars around.

It's a shame Michelin couldn't have tested their tyres in the period between the resurfacing and the actual race day so they could've turned up with the right ones for the weird surface. Maybe now they'll plan ahead a bit better.