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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 25, 2020 18:15:40 GMT -8
racer.com/2020/04/25/retro-what-was-it-like-to-race-in-f1s-most-controversial-grand-prix/Pretty fascinating read as recalled by Tiago Montiero, who finished 3rd. He recalls the events of that somewhat (?) ill-fated US GP at Indy as the weekend unfolded. I was there that weekend and watched the 14 Michelin runners peel of into the pits on the formation lap via the jumbo tron down in the corner 6 terrace grandstands. The cars were wheeled into their garages and the six Bridgestone cars were the only cars to start that day.
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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 25, 2020 18:57:07 GMT -8
Here is my recollection of that weekend.
On Friday during practice, Ralf Schumacher, driving for Toyota, had a heavy crash in turn 13 (Indy turn 1 on oval). I was watching from turn 10 area and saw his car come by on a flat bed afterwards. It was junked. They were unsure of the cause, suspension or rear tire failure. We left the track not really giving two thoughts about it.
Back at the track Saturday morning, Ricardo Zonta, Toyota's reserve driver was in for Ralf Schumacher. Though he walked away from his crash on Friday (unlike in 2004), he woke up Saturday morning complaining of a headache so he was ruled medically unfit to drive. Schumacher's teammate, Jarno Trulli, put his Toyota on the pole which was a pretty big surprise considering the Toyotas lacked the pace of some of the other Michelin runners, McLaren, Renault, and Williams that season. Practice and qualifying went without a hitch. No reason to think anything sinister was up until...
Saturday night upon returning to my hotel from dinner, I turned on the local news to see there was big trouble brewing with the safety of the Michelin tires, hmmmmmm. Michelin said they had a different compound of tires back in France that they could have air freighted overnight to Indy. Ferrari and Bridgestone were balking at approving this move. Fuck, what a shit show as I went to sleep.
Sunday morning I got to the track at about 8 am. There was no real chatter going from what I could tell. However, about an hour before the race, I was sitting in my seat in Corner 6 when this fellow wearing a William-BMW shirt sits down in front of me. He definitely was not an American, probably French. He looks back at us and says to all of us (paraphrasing here), "Look, I have this friend at BMW Williams who I talk to about 30 minutes ago. This tire situation with Michelin is very serious according to him. Michelin's request was rejected by Bridgstone and Ferrari to bring new tires to track. He tells me Michelin tells them tires they brought aren't safe and they can't race on them. I think Michelin teams are going to pull out before the start. I am sorry. I hope they find a resolution but this is F1 and rules are rules, no compromise. I am sorry. I hope I am wrong."Awesome! So, I watch cars go by on the formation lap to grid. I start shooting photos of the cars. I get a shot of JPM's McLaren-Mercedes one last time. Then as we look at the jumbo tron, Trulli's Toyota peels off onto pit lane followed by Kimi, Alonso, and the rest of the Michelin runners. One by one the mechanics put the cars up on the dollies and wheeled the cars back into their garages to retire them. I remember seeing JPM pleading from his cockpit to let him race. As a Montoya fan, I was gutted. Then there were six cars, two Ferraris, Jordans, and Minardis. Paul Stoddart, who owned Minardi, was shown on jumbo tron giving a thumbs down as the cars came to the grid. Then the six-car GP was underway and the fans were not happy. Fans tussled with Tifosi. Fans threw stuff on the track. A lot of fans walked out in disgust. I stuck around because I was witnessing something historical in the making.
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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 25, 2020 19:14:47 GMT -8
So, lot of people blamed Ferrari and Bridgestone, at the time, for the six-car USGP fiasco but Michelin did not bring suitable tire. Or did they really? Toyota was only car that experienced rear tire failure and that was probably because they were running their tires under Michelin's pressure recommendations. Same thing happened with Williams later that season at Turkey with no boycott.
In 2005, teams were forced to run one set of tires from qualifying to end of race, correct? There was also no tire testing allowed during the season? When teams get to Indy, Bridgestone leans on parent company, Firestone, to give them a compound suitable to Indy's track surface. So, Michelin which held a substantial advantage over Bridgestone all season found themselves at disadvantage first time all year at Indy. This was, imo, all political. Michelin was lodging a protest against the regulations of the time. There was nothing wrong with the tires that weekend. Later it came out that Trulli qualified with a light load of fuel. Toyota knew they weren't racing on Sunday so they went for glory on Saturday. Made a lot of sense in hindsight.
Michelin pulled off the dick moves of all dick moves that year at Indy.
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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 25, 2020 19:20:24 GMT -8
Michelin tried to make it up to fans for the 2006 USGP at Indy. They offered a refund program to fans who had tickets to the 2005 race or they would give every fan who had a ticket to the 2005 race, a free ticket to the 2006 race. Fan's choice what option they wanted.
Unfortunately, damage was already done. 2007 was last year F1 ran at Indy but....
Will Penske bring F1 back to the Brickyard?
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Post by hairyscotsman on Apr 25, 2020 20:14:04 GMT -8
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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 25, 2020 21:17:37 GMT -8
First time I heard the gambling part up and down pit road. I always heard of tire issues with other teams but never really believed it because Toyota with Ralf was the only one I actually saw fail. I became a little cynical and developed the opinion that they were towing the company line. I also found it strange that Ron Dennis found out only ten minutes before the start that they were going to boycott? When I heard 30 to 45 minutes before the start from some stranger in the stands that a boycott was likely on? Something doesn't add up. |
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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 25, 2020 21:26:34 GMT -8
So, if the tires were run to elevated pressures as recommended by Michelin, they would have been race worthy but they would have had some performance drop off? So they might have had to concede one race to Bridgestone, which they wound up doing anyway? USGP at Indy was the only Bridgestone win in 2005 and the Ferrari F2005 was a dog. I think if one of the top Michelin runners could have kept their tires together, Michelin could have swept all the races in 2005.
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Post by hairyscotsman on Apr 26, 2020 7:01:27 GMT -8
First time I heard the gambling part up and down pit road. I always heard of tire issues with other teams but never really believed it because Toyota with Ralf was the only one I actually saw fail. I became a little cynical and developed the opinion that they were towing the company line. I also found it strange that Ron Dennis found out only ten minutes before the start that they were going to boycott? When I heard 30 to 45 minutes before the start from some stranger in the stands that a boycott was likely on? Something doesn't add up. The impression I got from Priestley in that video was that they thought the boycott was likely, but that high-level meetings were happening all morning, trying to avert the boycott, and that right up to the formation lap McLaren weren't certain what they were going to do. |
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Post by hairyscotsman on Apr 26, 2020 7:14:50 GMT -8
This comment in the youtube comments caught my attention. Any ideas what this guy is referring to here:
"this whole thing NEVER WAS ABOUT the tyres , it was (quoting Frank Williams) "a Coupe " , funny part is the so called "Bad guys " from then ,are the ones in control of F1 NOW."
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Post by ChemEng on Apr 26, 2020 10:53:13 GMT -8
So, if the tires were run to elevated pressures as recommended by Michelin, they would have been race worthy but they would have had some performance drop off? So they might have had to concede one race to Bridgestone, which they wound up doing anyway? USGP at Indy was the only Bridgestone win in 2005 and the Ferrari F2005 was a dog. I think if one of the top Michelin runners could have kept their tires together, Michelin could have swept all the races in 2005. They put out a formal statement at some point that they tried elevated pressure in their test equipment and it wasn't enough. If that is true, then they built a really crappy tire. At some elevated pressure, the tire should have stiffened enough to stabilize the standing wave. That is a science fact concerning the behavior of standing waves. Speed, load, tread stiffness, and sidewall stiffness are all factors. Increased pressure will stiffen the tread and sidewall, and also reduce temperature buildup which further stiffens the rubber. Reduced temperature also affects performance. The real story seems to be that they made their power move to get a chicane installed because the increased tire pressure would cause a lap time penalty of about 2 seconds. |
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Post by racerman967 on Apr 26, 2020 11:44:01 GMT -8
The bigger issue was the diamond grinding if the track earlier in the year. The Michelin tires just got cheese grated on it. All of their data was based on a repaved track but they didn't take into consideration the grinding. Which they should have no excuse since Firestone made the tires for Indy and the track was ground before that. My guess is that Bridgestone was threatening to pull out and that upset Ferrari.
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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 26, 2020 12:21:39 GMT -8
There were supposedly 10 "issues" with Michelins that weekend. Two of them were with Toyota. Ralf on Friday and Zonta had a rear fail on Saturday. Zonta's happened in the infield though, maybe at the end of the Hulman Blvd heading into the turn 10 complex. I can't recall exactly. So, who had the other eight issues? Maybe Marc Priestly mentioned McLaren was one of them. It was late when I watched his video.😴
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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 26, 2020 12:23:07 GMT -8
I had a question for Marc in the comments about Trulli getting pole for Toyota and he answered!😀
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Post by montybriscoe on Apr 26, 2020 12:44:06 GMT -8
This comment in the youtube comments caught my attention. Any ideas what this guy is referring to here: "this whole thing NEVER WAS ABOUT the tyres , it was (quoting Frank Williams) "a Coupe " , funny part is the so called "Bad guys " from then ,are the ones in control of F1 NOW." Jean Todt? Ross Brawn? Ferrari were the perceived bad guys back then. These two ran the bad guys, Ferrari. Now, they hold high ranking positions within FIA and the governing of F1 today. |
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Post by pushtopass on Apr 26, 2020 13:50:56 GMT -8
This comment in the youtube comments caught my attention. Any ideas what this guy is referring to here: "this whole thing NEVER WAS ABOUT the tyres , it was (quoting Frank Williams) "a Coupe " , funny part is the so called "Bad guys " from then ,are the ones in control of F1 NOW." Actually it wasn't a Coupe, it was a single seater.... |
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Post by olderguysrule on Apr 26, 2020 14:58:19 GMT -8
This comment in the youtube comments caught my attention. Any ideas what this guy is referring to here: "this whole thing NEVER WAS ABOUT the tyres , it was (quoting Frank Williams) "a Coupe " , funny part is the so called "Bad guys " from then ,are the ones in control of F1 NOW." Actually it wasn't a Coupe, it was a single seater.... I'd say Frank was misquoted or someone got the wrong spelling. I'm pretty sure he meant Coup. As in Coup d'etat. Coup d'état definition is - a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics; especially : the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group |
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Post by rmp0012002 on Apr 26, 2020 16:52:41 GMT -8
Michelin blamed Bridgestone since Bridgestone is Firestone and had testing on the track through the use of the Firestone brand through IndyCar/IRL. Only Toyota had issues but was on pole (?) but it turned into power struggle which the Bridgestone teams won as Michelin didn’t get to change their tires. People had been accusing Bridgestone of making specific tires for Ferrari for years.
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Post by chernaudi on Apr 26, 2020 22:41:22 GMT -8
They probably were relative to the other Bridgestone runners until Bridgestone became the spec tire supplier before Pirelli came in.
In road racing Michelin have done the same, such as in the WEC Toyota have been using bespoke tires made for them by Michelin, and when Audi and Porsche were around, they also ran bespoke tires that Michelin tailored to their cars.
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Korean cable TV is lousy. no more NASCAR nor NHRA