Justin Hynes on the latest blow to Formula One
Formula One is a complex sport. It takes an investment of time and enthusiasm to appreciate the nuances that go to make up a car, a driver, a team, a race. The US, where sporting "entertainment" is often measured in bite-size, jump-cut thrills, is not the venue to test that investment.
Yet on Sunday, Formula One presented an entertainment-led audience with a questionnaire as complex as any sport could deliver: When does safety take precedence over crowd- pleasing? What effect do lateral and vertical forces have on a Sunday afternoon's splurge of petrol fumes, hot dogs and beer? How can a race be a race when you have only six hopelessly mismatched adversaries?
So far the exam has been met with a pointed, deafening "We don't understand." And that failure to understand could have profound effects on F1's bid to conquer the US.
The background to Sunday's events is simple, but the events are complex and in front of a crowd used to more direct racing series went unappreciated.
On Friday, the Michelin-shod Toyota of Ralf Schumacher suffered a tyre failure which pitched the German into the wall at Turn 13, ruling him out for the rest of the weekend. The carcass of the tyre was examined by Michelin, but by Saturday morning it explained that "no root cause" could be found and it confessed it could not guarantee the safety of the tyres used.
Qualifying proceeded, with Schumacher's Toyota team-mate Jarno Trulli stealing pole. Still Michelin expressed doubts. But the die was cast. Tyres used in qualifying had to be used in the race.
Letters fluttered between the French company and the FIA, F1's governing body. Michelin recommended that the cars be slowed through Turn 13. It was a veiled hint at the company's later request for a chicane to be installed in the turn to slow the cars down. The FIA refused, responding that Michelin should advise the drivers of its partner teams of the correct speed to take the 300kmh corner. The impasse continued.
Michelin-shod teams suggested bringing in a replacement tyre, a move which would break five of the FIA's rules and would lead to severe sanctions either prior to the race in terms of a sequence of stop-go penalties or post-race with a loss of points or a time penalty. Moves which would have rendered the event farcical as a spectacle. It was to become more so.
By Sunday morning Michelin had conducted tests on the Indanapolis spec tyre and a replacement tyre brought in overnight. Both were deemed unsuitable. The company confessed it could guarantee the safety of the tyres only for 10 laps at normal speeds.
The FIA responded that, if such was the case, then the teams could run for that duration, pit, have the tyres assessed for safety and have new tyres fitted on safety grounds, as is contained in the rules.
Again not the response hoped for by Michelin or its teams. The teams then finally articulated what had been on their minds since Friday - the installation of a chicane at Turn 13 to slow the cars down.
The FIA flatly refused, despite the team's desire to stage a race. "We wanted to at least entertain the crowds," said Frank Williams. "We were prepared to race for no points and give them all to Ferrari. I can't stress enough how desperate we were."
Arguments went back and forth, with a side-split developing within the Bridgestone-shod teams along political lines, non-FIA aligned Minardi voting for the chicane, Jordan agreeing in principle and Bernie Ecclestone and FIA-aligned Ferrari maintaining a dignified silence.
The impasse continued until the last minute when, having been flatly denied the chicane, the Michelin-shod teams refused to race. Cue chaos, farce, acrimony and a hazy future for F1 in Indianapolis.
So what was at issue? The exact safety concerns of Michelin are still somewhat unclear but seemed to rest on the additional vertical and lateral forces being put on the tyres by the 300km/h run across the banking of Turn 13 of the Indy track (Turn 1 in the Indy Racing League). As the cars barrelled through the turn an extra G of force was being dumped on top of the car leading to deformation of the sidewalls of the tyre.
Some suggested Toyota had run tyres with lower pressure in order to create a greater contact patch, thus giving more grip and allowing them to run less rear wing which would increase the car's straight-line speed. The teams were advised to run higher pressures to stiffen the sidewalls, but this makes the cars more difficult to drive.
Other Michelin teams, BAR in particular, insisted they had the pace to run with more wing and had had no tyre problems.
Running at high pressure with poor handling or low pressure at risk of tyre failure seems to have led Michelin to conclude that neither option was safe and that the teams should withdraw. They did so and furore goes on.
While Michelin will have questions to answer about its preparedness for the event and its inability to provide a secondary compound of greater efficacy, debate over the validity of its decision to withdraw is pointless.
The team was clearly right to advise withdrawal if there was the slightest chance a driver suffering an accident at over 300kmh.
The larger debate is whether Formula One has done itself irreparable damage in the US. It was only three years ago that Ferrari incurred the wrath of fans with the manipulated one-two finish of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. This latest nightmare could kill any hope of building a solid US foundation.
The shame is that, after five years of valiant effort, F1 seemed to be gaining a toe-hold at Indianapolis. In the first year of the event up to 200,000 turned up, mostly out of curiosity. But Schumacher domination caused numbers to plummet as the circuit dwarfed the tiny F1 cars making them look slow and dull.
But in the past two seasons numbers have been growing. This year about 100,000 bought into F1 at Indy, the race beginning to become a fixture of the racing season at IMS, alongside IRL's Indy 500 and NASCAR's Brickyard 400. All that goodwill is now spent.
In recent weeks there has been speculation that the sport is on the brink of a deal to revisit Las Vegas, where it last raced in 1982. The intention appears to have been to hold a race on either side of the continent. Instead, F1 has squandered its chances of success in the US.
Paddock opinion on Sunday night suggested that any contract with IMS owner Tony George for a 2006 US GP will be torn up and that F1 will once again abandon the US as a lost cause.
That may be extreme. On Monday morning the circuit administration office was busy selling tickets for next year's F1 race.Whether there are enough to make it attractive for TV companies to spend on the crucial (for F1) TV rights remains to be seen.