Has Formula 1 just killed itself in the US ?

Well up to now LFC, this season has been fantastic, Raikkonen and Alonso have been trading blows, and dont forget, now Schumacher has won the ‘sham race’, hes now back in the Championship hunt.

Hi All,

Well on Sports Center they are reporting that any fan who wants a refund will recieve it and their is talk that this is going to be the last GP in the States.

RER

And so they should. But in such a litigious country as the USofA I’m sure a good number of people will be seeking recompense for all expenses incurred over the weekend. Shouldn’t be in the least surprised if someone doesn’r try to sue fpr post traumatic stress disorder.

Regards,

kev35

Knowing my luck if I had been on one of those cars I would have come seventh.

Hi All,

Well on Sports Center they are reporting that any fan who wants a refund will recieve it and their is talk that this is going to be the last GP in the States.

RER

I think F1 lost it’s way when entrants were forced to build their own chassis – the good old days when (given that one had the cash) you could buy an engine and a chassis, hire a driver and go F1 racing were the best. It also kept costs down and filled the grids.

The FIA dropped the ball this weekend, and the breakaway championship is even more probable now.

JC

With regard the fact that Bridgestone had changed the tyre makeup, this was because Firestone had been involved with the Indy 500 (I think it was that one!) a few weeks back and warned Bridgstone about it, so they had time to make the neccessary adjustments. Michelin were not warned of this, and until the first sessions started were not aware that the track was a problem, to their credit they did send out different tyres, but the teams were unable to use them because this was breaking 5 different FIA rules.

It cannot all be blamed on Michelin, the chicane should have been put in, or the entire race should have been postponed…………what were they going to do, wait until a driver was killed?

As to the FIA and Ferrari being hand in hand, I am sure glad someone else said that! it’s what I have been thinking for a while……….in fact it first came to mind the day M Schumacher won a race in the pit lane while on a 10 sec stop/go penalty………..how the heck can you win a race without going over the finish line???? :rolleyes:

One thing’s for sure, the lawyers will be getting rich…

JC

Grey Area – CART Racing is now known as Champcar Racing:

From here http://www.answers.com/topic/champcars where there is more details…

The Champ Car World Series (CCWS)
As of 2005, Champ Car is the official name of the racing series being promoted as the Bridgestone Presents the Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford since early 2003.

Champ Car, as a corporate entity, replaced CART, Championship Auto Racing Teams Inc, a company headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. CART was founded in November 1978 by Roger Penske, Pat Patrick, Dan Gurney and several other team owners who had been participating in USAC events involving cars known as Champ Cars and IndyCars. They oversaw the day-to-day business and sanctioning of Champ Car racing at locations that today include the United States, Canada, Mexico, Korea and Australia. The Champ Car organization runs the Champ Car World Series and the Toyota Atlantic Championship. Champ Car also operates the Trans-Am Series in a cooperative agreement with SCCA Pro Racing.

Also see…
http://www.cart-racing.com/

From what I have been able to deduce, CART racing is like Indy racing, round and round in a circle with over-excited shouting commentators, till everyone either crashes or the set number of laps end. It travels from track to track like an in-house US F1 circuit kind of. Lots of Indy and F1 drivers are involved in this circuit, even women drivers now too.

It is nowhere near as interesting as F1 on the wider scale IMHO but usually has lots of crashes which the Americans seem to relish. We see a fair bit of it here on TV because New Zealander Scott Dixon races in the series, and was Rookie of the Year when he first started about two years ago. He was tipped as the next Kiwi F1 driver but it fizzled out when he CART racing waned a little in results. He did test for BMW last year though.

I don’t follow CART really so am no expert, but that’s the basics as I know it.

Montoya came to F1 from the CART series I believe, which is probably why he loves to crash so much. I think it was CART racers that feature in the dreadful Sly Stallone film “Driven”, in which Montoya appears as an “actor”.

As for this morning’s race, as much as I can see that Michelin is at fault for not doing it’s homework on the new track surface as well as Bridgestone/Firestone did (and the latter was only aware of problems because CART had the same problem a month ago on the surface and acted accordingly to change tyre design), I also see some fault in the track owners themselves for not notifying the tyre manufacturers that they’d altered the surface so drastically. According to Martin Brundle and James Allen, if you looked at the track with the naked eye it looked like little sharpened diamonds in the matrix of the surface and it felt sharp to the touch. Strange surface by all accounts.

Was a total disgrace, this should of been sorted out straight after the Ralf Schumacher incident, Michelin are going to be in it from the FIA! I dont particularly like the US GP anyway, the banked corners that have caused all the problems are the only decent bits, the infield section is a joke, if that was any other track, everyone would be complaining about how boring it was.

I felt so sorry for Tiago Monteiro, just got his 1st podium in F1, obviously delighted no matter what the circumstanses, stood on the podium celebrating on his own. Jordan always seem to benefit from extroidinary circumstanses, remember Fisichellas win in Brazil a couple of years ago when the race got stopped?

I will still keep the faith with F1, this season has been the best I have ever watched (Been watching since 1996).

Pierre – I too enjoy the BTCC, some good races at Oulton Park yesterday!

Rather have BTCC myself, but there again yesterdays F1 race was a total balls up once the tyre issue had come to light the track should have been changed and the points put on hold it the next race. dont think the indy track is suited to F1 either there must be more suitable venues, big business again its all down to money chaps.

Paul

The whole farcical situation is proof that Ferari runs the FIA. Ferari were the only team to veto the suggestion of a chicane on turn 13 but the FIA still decided not to do anything about it. This is not the first time that events have happened which suggest that the FIA bows to Ferari. I feel the FIA should be paying to refund the ticket money to the fans.

Bit of everything I think, also what didn’t help was the track surface, it was a new one and apparently was very rough and that’s what was not helping with the tyres.

For the life of me I cannot understand why they came up with the one set rule. :confused:

For what it’s worth, I hope that this debacle see’s the end of the one tyre set rule. No-one has yet satisfactorily explained why there was no chicane installed to allow the entire field to race – ok, tough luck on Bridgestone but the damage to the sport would have been lower.

JC

LFC24……the Michelin tyres were having trouble with one of the corners, they were running the risk of exploding and causing serious trouble. I think during the practise they had 11 incidents, 2 of which were bad. The teams asked for a chicane to be put in or they would not race, the chicane didn’t get built so 14 out of the 20 drivers did not take part.

Michelin flew some replacement tyres in, but they couldn’t be used as when someone went through the rule book, in using them the teams would have each broken 5 FIA rules.

The Bridgestone tyres were ok, as they had been modified, Bridgestone had been forewarned by Firestone about the change in track surface.

I think they had said that if the Michelin tyres didn’t explode, then they had a life of about 10 laps in them.

Personally, i think they should have made a decision well before the race to either install a new chicaine or postpone the race.
Plus i don’t think Schumacher should of won because it wasn’t even a race! It was just going round a circuit 73 times…

What’s CART, Sauron? :confused:

F1 is a bore. CART, for all it’s problems, is far more entertaining.

Sauron

I was hoping for a race but as soon as the Michelin cars began pulling into pitlane, I turned it off. A friend of mine and I had planned on driving all the way down from southwestern Ontario to Indiannapolis for the week-end to see the qualifying and the race. But, because of work, we were forced to cancel our plans at the last minute. Looking back, I am glad we had to stay home.
However, this is the first time in years that F1 has been interesting. Ferrari hasn’t been dominant like it has been and two new drivers are emerging as the future of Formula 1. There is a chance the United States will loose their Grand Prix but then again, maybe not. Time will tell! At least, I will still be able to travel to Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix!

Craztmainer.

Isn’t NASCAR a bit boring? Oh, look, it’s another oval, set the car up to do the turns and the drivers main input then is avoiding wreckage. Too many crashes, too much safety car and the same endless drone as the cars go round and round with the ones who don’t smack into the wall or each other being left to see who can cross the line first.

Kev,

I never said it wasn’t boring thou if you see it live its real different then watching it on the tube. Their is alot of racing that goes on then folk really realize, setting the draft when to move up what lane to us be it the high side or the low side. I think one reason F1 doesn’t appeal to alot of the US market is because the cars get broken up into small groups that make it hard for TV. Also one thing that NASCAR has done is to try and educated the mass with all sorts of neat stuff like the chassy cam and the roof cam that turns 360 Degrees plus the drivers are very open to the general public. As for going around in circles all day all racing is that its just amatter of what type of racing we are talking about here.

RER