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Articles by Darren Galpin
| Pyrrhic Indeed - Sun 19th Jun 2005 |
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As usual, ITV introduced their Formula 1 coverage with loud rock music, and as this was the American Grand Prix, they played some American rock music by Green Day. Specifically, they played one of their latest songs, American Idiot. Nice to see that ITV are doing their best for transatlantic relations. But it wasn’t American idiocy that caused the problems for the race – the Europeans were more than capable of screwing it all up on their own.
The race was a farce – it was a shambles, a fiasco, a travesty, a circus, a sham, a mockery, a charade of a race, an embarrassment, a disgrace, full of raillery and doggerel, and a caricature of what it all should be. As is usual these days, it all came down to tyres. The Indianapolis track had been resurfaced over the winter, but the drivers for the Indianapolis 500 complained that the track now lacked grip. So to get that race underway, Indianapolis used diamond tipped grinders to wear away the surface and increase the grip. That was fine for the cars of the Indy Racing League, but the increased grip meant that the tyres would wear faster. Now, IRL cars run on Firestone tyres, and Firestone is owned by Bridgestone. This meant that Bridgestone knew of the changes, but Michelin didn’t.
It also seems that there was a manufacturing fault back in the Michelin factory, which caused the left rear tyres to generate far too much heat when under load on the Indianapolis banking. Michelin suffered 11 failures before the race even started. Some were partial failures which were only uncovered when the cars returned to the pits. However, Toyota suffered two explosive failures which completely destroyed the tyres, one pitching Ralf Schumacher into the same wall that he hit last year, resulting in his hospitalisation. Something had to be done, as Michelin realised that the teams couldn’t complete anything like a race distance on one set of tyres. The question was what?
Michelin had two suggestions. One was that it be allowed to fly in some more tyres from France. These might have had the same fault – Michelin didn’t know – but they were different and might have done. This, though, would have broken at least five of the F1 rules, according to Charlie Whiting of the FIA. So, Michelin then requested that a chicane be added before the cars hit the banking in order to slow them down. This is where it gets particularly murky.
If you listen to Paul Stoddart of Minardi, 9 teams agreed to allow the chicane to be added, with one refusing – Ferrari. However, according to Ferrari, they were never asked either way and it was up to the FIA to say what was happening. The FIA weren’t publicly saying anything. So the time counted down to the race, and no-one really knew what was going on. All of the cars made the grid, but as they came around off their warm-up lap, all of the Michelin shod cars peeled off and returned to their garages, leaving six cars on the grid: two Ferrari’s, two Jordan’s and two Minardi’s. It would be one hell of a race! Guess who would win?
You couldn’t blame Ferrari completely. After all, their tyres were OK, and they weren’t facing any problems for the race. Why should they be penalised for getting it right? Even so, if they were the only team holding out against the insertion of a chicane, then they missed a chance to show that they could act for the good of the sport as a whole by going along with it. Instead, they have possibly highlighted again their self-interest. It was obvious that they were going to win the race, but any victory was going to be exceedingly hollow. If Michael Schumacher wins the championship this year, and does it by anything less than 10 points, then it will be a very tarnished championship indeed.
The race itself was actually a fight for the first half of the race, until Ferrari central rang up the drivers and told them to start racing. This was probably more of a case of Ferrari ensuring that both of their cars finished the race, rather than trying to fix it. Due to problems in the pits, Michael had fallen behind Rubens, although he had a couple more laps of fuel on board. The outcome of the race was then decided at the second stops – as Michael emerged from his stop, he was marginally behind Rubens heading into the first corner. He placed his car into the apex, and Rubens tried to be later on the brakes. They did avoid hitting each other, but only just – Barrichello shot off line and took a trip across the grass, rejoining in turn 3. From the chassis language over the next few corners, it seemed obvious that Barrichello was mightily browned off, and he set about closing the gap down again. Hence the big red telephone call. It was a shame, as it killed the last laps of the Grand Prix entirely – what else was there to look forward to?
The only positive from the race was the extra exposure for Minardi and Jordan, and the financial exposure that their sponsors got must have been manna from heaven. And they were bothl guaranteed to get championship points, which means that they will both get travel money for the next year, a big help to their small budgets. But there was at least some interest in finding out which order they would finish in.
The winner from this group was Thiago Monteiro, who finished third and thus got his first Formula 1 podium. In fact, he is the first Portuguese driver to get onto the World Championship F1 podium. When collecting his trophy on the podium, he couldn’t be happier, and you had to feel a touch sorry for him for the circumstances. At least the crowd booed far less when he was celebrating than when either of the Ferrari drivers collected theirs.
Comment of the weekend though has to go to Martin Brundle. He was contemplating the podium celebration with James Allen, when he said “If Michael Schumacher goes onto the podium and does a victory leap, I’m going to personally go out there and punch him.” How I was wishing that Michael Schumacher would do that jump, as I would have loved to see Brundle attempt it.
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