Not All Publicity Is Good Publicity

While in New Orleans, I knew I would not be able to enjoy Speed Channel’s expanded coverage of the Formula One US Grand Prix, held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, so I made sure to record all of it. I scrupulously avoided newspapers, Sportscenter, even internet sites such as my Porsche group where the race might be discussed, so that I could watch the qualifying and race completely untainted.

Having now seen what transpired, I’m a little surprised I didn’t accidentally trip over the story before last night. That I didn’t indicates how far under the radar Formula One continues to be in the US, and what happened will only send it farther into the “cult/fanatical following” wing of sports in America.

The short story: Michelin, which supplies tires to seven of the ten two-car teams, suffered failures to two of its tires during practices, one of which sent Ralf Schumacher’s Toyota into the wall on the Speedway’s main straight (the F1 track’s turn 13) in an eerie repeat of the crash that took Schumacher out of six races last year with a broken back. Michelin came to believe that the stress of running one of Indy’s banked corners was too much for its tires to handle, and declared the tires unsafe. There are tons of circumstances, nuances and politics involved, but the end result is that when the governing body refused to reconfigure the track in the hours before the race began, none of the Michelin-equipped teams raced, leaving three teams (Ferrari, along with perennial backmarkers Jordan and Minardi) to run the race.

Racing web forums are ablaze with debate about who is to blame: Michelin, the FIA, the teams, the track, etc. My personal feeling is that Michelin bears by far the majority of the blame. They provided their teams with an inferior product. The compounded the error by stating in writing that they could not certify that the tires were safe. However, Michelin also apparently told the teams that they could not drive more than 10 laps on the tires, which suggests not that the tires were completely unsafe, but were simply not competitive. The FIA, which is so rigid that it will penalize teams for such seemingly miniscule rules infractions as using brake ducts that are half an inch too large, was not at all inclined to follow Michelin’s demand that a chicane be added to turn 13. The politics are far too involved to explain here, but there is a tremendous amount of posturing going on that has nothing to do with driver safety. Unfortunately, Michelin's carelessness and arrogance, coupled with the FIA's intransigence, prevented Formula One fans from seeing a proper race. Several foreign television services even cut off their broadcasts long before the end of the race, an extraordinary dismissal of what is constantly touted as the world's most popular sport (other than soccer, of course).

All of this is something of a huge joke to American fans, who are accustomed to watching stock cars, which weigh 2.5 times more and go just as fast on skinnier tires, pound around tracks such as Indy, with its 9 degrees of bank, or Talladega with its 33 degree banking, for as much as 600 miles. With Michelin's poor preparation for this race, and its weak-kneed, dissembling response, it’s hard to resist French surrender jokes here.

Formula One will continue to grab the attention of us incurable fanatics. I can’t blame any casual sports fan, however, who just shakes his head in wonder at the arrogance of the European powers that be that cannot get their act together to put on a legitimate race, then turns the page and never thinks about it again.