F1 Racing Fiasco

I spent the entire weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway watching some pretty fantastic racing. The US Grand Prix was in town and there was a lot of racing to be seen. Formula 1, unbeknownst to most Americans, is the premier racing league in the world. They have all of the top drivers and the most technologically advanced cars in the world. Schumacher, the best driver in F1, is the highest paid athlete in the world. It's a pretty incredible weekend.

Saturday was practice day and qualification day. We saw the F1 cars burn around the track at pretty incredible speeds. We also got to see some Porsche 911 races and some other open-wheeled events. It was a good time. For those who have followed the Andretti family, Mario's grandson Marco smoked everybody in the Infinity racing series.

The real drama of the weekend happened on Sunday. Seven of the ten teams (2 drivers per team) were using Michelin tires. Apparently the tires weren't performing as necessary and Michelin deamed them "unsafe" for the race. Forumula 1 has a rule that you can't change anything on the car between qualifications and race-day, so all 14 cars with Michelins were running under risk.

So what happened? Well, all of the cars lined up on the grid and took a warm up lap, but at the end of that lap all of the Michelin cars just pulled into the pits and put their cars back into the garage. That's it, game over. There were just six cars left, hardly something that could be called a race.

Needless to say, the fans were livid. F1 is a very international sport and people had spent thousands of dollars to travel from Brazil, Japan, Germany, Italy, etc. I can't imagine how those people felt. I was mad as heck and I didn't even pay for my ticket, plus I only had to drive 10 minutes to get there. The booing, chanting, swearing, and throwing of things kept up for about 15 minutes and then people just started leaving. It was horrible.

The word on the street is that Formula 1 is probably over in America, or at least in Indy. The owner of the Indy track pays F1 quite a bit of money to hold the race and doesn't actually make much of it back on race day. He's lucky to break even. He was obviously not so happy with this development, nor was anyone else associated with Indy.

It's Michelin, F1, and the teams that are to blame. They just couldn't reach a compromise. Michelin, through poor planning and not bring any backup tires (which they should always do), ruined things. F1 wouldn't bend the rules for the situation so that the fans could see a race. The teams wouldn't run at a "less than optimal" vehicle set-up that would have made their cars safe again. Basically, they're all a bunch of stubborn, rich brats with no respect for the fans.

Oh well, at least I had fun the rest of the weekend. I really do like F1 racing far more than NASCAR, Champ series, or the IRL. It was a good weekend overall, with some drama at the end to leave a sour taste in my mouth. I'm just glad I didn't spend $5000 to bring my child with me to Indianapolis from Brazil to see the race like a guy on the news did. Ouch!