brillo

How many people where there? 70K 100K? thats like $7-$10 million alone, not including the extra tickets they are buying. I think if Bernie picked up everyones travel expenses this whole mess might go away.


http://www.michelinman.com/differenc...06282005a.html

Glyphon

if they actually do refund the ticket price, that will be a very good move for michelin, pr wise.

it also lends credibility to their claim that they tried everything they could to remedy their initial tire screwup.

Rasputin

After reading a lot of reports on what happened, I can't understand how Michelin can be hold responsible for that mess. They has a bad batch of tyres. They told the teams using them. They offered them replacements. Their responsability stops at the team level (financial penalties maybe).
That said, their move is pretty good indeed.

Let's hope F1 dies once for all now. They would be much more money for other series of car racing.

Fabrice

RX Renesis

anyone wanna fill me in on waht happened?

SilverBullitt

Correction Rasputin... it was NOT a bad batch of tires... :-)

http://www.tsn.ca/auto_racing/news_story.asp?id=129003

Rasputin

Agreed, wrong wording. Not adapted to that track should I say. Whether it's in production they screwed up (bad batch) or in development (not adapted) does not change much on the fact they cocked up!

My opinion (very humble one) is that the teams running Michelin were the main "race inhibitors" in this business, not Michelin that, as a top quality supllier, tried to find solutions. The teams did not want to run with replacements tyres and get the penalty hit!

I understand why the US spectators are mad about all this. F1 is dead in US for a while I guess.

Fabrice

GotBass

Thats a great gesture. IMO really are not responsible. Yes they had a tire problem. But they told the F1 about it far in advance and offered several solutions. F1 could did not want to save the race and did not car about the fans. I cant wait until all the teams except for Ferrari leave F1 and start their own series without Eccelstone and Mosely.

rotarygod

I hope F1 doesn't die here. It's one of only 2 worthwhile racing classes that we have in the U.S. F1 and the Champ Car series are the only 2 decent types. IRL and NASCAR are about boring yet they are popular. Drag racing is...well...we won't even go there. We don't have any big rally races which are exciting to watch except for Pike's Peak and even that isn't terribly exciting. It doesn't ever get much TV coverage anyways. F1 has actually been trying to bring back the Grand Prix of Long Beach and progress away from Indianapolis. That would be cool with me. We need more road course type of events and less boring round and round or straight line for 4 second types of racing. The US is just so backwoods and old fashioned when it comes to racing.

tuj

Couldn't agree more RG. But what about the SCCA pro-level competition? That is some serious quality racing there, and I don't understand why it isn't more popular. Its everything that I think something like nascar should be but isn't. The SCCA is true production-based racing; either in pretty modified form, like the trans-am series, or in nearly pure stock form, like Spec Miata or even Showroom Stock. Its close racing, with real cars that spectators can actually own. Even better is the fact that costs are comparitively low, enabling more competition from 'mom+pop' type teams. Run races in 20 or 30 lap sprints and keep rules consistent for years at a time.

himitsu

I guess Americans preference in Sport will always differ from the rest of the world.

Me, Id take F1 anyday over the boring Nascar or Indy, 200 something laps over an endlessly boring oval track. Or drag racing, shooting your car in a 400 meter straight line, yeah... thats fun to watch, not.

Anyway, thats very noble of Michelin to own up for the fiasco, the same thing cant be said for the teams, a bunch of cry babies. They coulda just raced and voluntarily slowdown on the offending corner, yet they whine for a chicane to cripple Bridgestone runners.... puleeez.

Bridgestone had a perfect tire, you dont, period... bridgestone tires are thicker, they take longer to warm up, which explains their (and ferraris) very poor performance in 2 laps of qualifying, yet they dont go and whine and ask for an extra lap of qualifying to match Michelin, now thats class.

I think those Michelin whiners deserve whatever penalties they are going to get, cant believe they even try to make it sound like its Ferraris fault...

tuj

The whole thing is a lot like what happened at Dayton in AMA last year. A couple tire blowouts in practice had everyone pretty concerned. And with good reason; I can't even imagine what it must feel like to have your rear tire blow out at 220 leaned over on the banking at Daytona.

As a driver or rider, if the tires are blowing out in practice, there must be a huge level of fear that the tire could go, even if speeds are reduced on the high-speed sections. Its not like they progressively fail; they just go without warning. Nobody wants to watch a race and see one of the competitors get killed. That's far worse than any debacle. So its really up to the tire manufacturers to make sure they get out to the high-speed venues pre-season and do adequate testing.

Road racing is where its at. I think one big reason people in the US don't like it is that its often not all that close. That's because a road course can reveal big differences in skill in a single lap, whereas that skill difference might only be manifested as like a 0.3 second advantage on a super speedway.

The other thing that would make road racing more popular is better track design with respects to spectating. There need to be more tracks designed so that the spectators can see much, if not all of the track. Some of the stadium-based rally events in Europe have featured some cool action; all of it visible from any vantage point.