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Flava Flavio Fights Formalities
Quick blurb on the TV saying Renualt won't race unless they get new rubber.
Comments
If the FIA don't, it wont look good for F1 in the US, if all the Michelin teams don't run because of safety. I wouldn't mind seeing Minardi racing in the points for 3rd an 4th place in front of the Jordans but I would rather see them there because the car is capable of running that high, not because only 6 cars started.
Last Updated: Sunday, 19, June, 2005, 02:26
Minardi boss Paul Stoddart has waded into the simmering controversy over tyre safety, warning that whatever decision is taken in the next 24 hours will have far-reaching repercussions.
Stoddart drew a parallel between Michelin’s request to be allowed to use a new batch of tyres in tomorrow’s race – in contravention of at least four F1 regulations – and his own campaign to be permitted to run 2004-spec cars in this year’s opening race at Melbourne.
On that occasion, Stoddart was involved in a stand-off with the FIA, winning an injunction from the civil courts that he should be allowed to enter his 2004 cars in the Australian Grand Prix only to finally relent and adapt the Minardis to conform with the 2005 regulations.
Stoddart, whose team runs on Bridgestone tyres, says he has sympathy for the predicament rival Michelin outfits find themselves in – but that the FIA would be acting inconsistently (make that hypocritically) if it were to allow the rules to be bent.
“The procedure is that 10 teams are going to have to agree something,” Stoddart was quoted as saying on SpeedTv.com.
“In the interests of safety I will agree, and let’s just say that Jordan and [Ferrari boss Jean] Todt, the other two Bridgestone runners, agree.
“You’re then going to have to have Max [Mosley]’s agreement, and Bernie [Ecclestone]’s agreement, so the 12 Concorde [Agreement] signatories are going to have to agree.
“Then Max has to request, I believe is the right word, the stewards to go along with it.
“The last time such a request was made, people will remember, was in Melbourne, when I had 10 signatures, and the stewards turned down such a request.
“They were sympathetic to it, but it was outside the regulations.
“This was clearly outside the regulations, so it will be interesting to see what happens.”
Stoddart claimed he was not raising these objections out of partisanship, but out of a desire to see the regulations applied on a consistent basis.
“I have the greatest sympathy for Michelin, it’s a great company, and I have great empathy with the teams that are affected by it,” he said.
“But there’s no clear-cut way out of this.
“Whatever takes place in the next few hours here, or perhaps even as much as the next 24 hours, [is] going to have far-reaching ramifications.
“If something is rushed through because of circumstances, I can’t see that not having wider ramifications down the track.”
One solution doing the rounds of the Indy paddock is that the Michelin teams could make a planned tyre change at some point during the race to fit a set used on Saturday.
Scheduled tyre changes are expressly forbidden in 2005, of course, and it is not clear what penalty would be assessed to teams that followed that policy.
“We don’t know [what the penalty would be],” admitted Stoddart. “At the start of the season we were told that the penalty was exclusion.
“I would not want to be in Max’s shoes today.
“At the moment the sympathy is with Michelin and the Michelin runners. No one wants to see anybody get hurt, and the whole issue of tyres and safety has come up again.
“How many drums have to be beaten before we wake up to the idea that the only way forward is a single tyre manufacturer and a single compound?
“It’s exactly what we all fought for, including sadly the teams that are being affected today.
“We all fought for it in Brazil last October, in November, in December, when Max cancelled the F1 Commission meeting that would have seen that get voted for.
“And now it’s in his latest proposals that he proposes that a single tyre should come in…”
itv-f1.com
Stoddart is absolutly right that the stewards schould not allow the michelins to run with new rubber. Now we need to concentrate and beat those Jordans, and hope for Ferrari unreliability for Minardi's first ever double podium and championship win.
Those same people that came up to him at the Oz GP ball should be the ones to beg for his sig in Indy.
I think the Michelin teams should retire from this race. It would be a fiasco PR-wise for F1 in the US, but a lesson learned for Michelin.
<3 Minardi's in the points>:P
If it it the case, lap 1 should be interesting, 20 driviers going through a chicaine they've never navigated before...
If the problem is the safety of the Michelin rubbered cars. Then let them change their tyres, but only under green flag conditions and within 3 laps of the start. That way they carry a heavy penalty without having to add times at the end of the race.
Although Michelin has told its seven teams not to race if the tyre problem isn't solved it is likely all teams will attend the US Grand Prix as expected. Michelin has requested the FIA to fly in new tyres or to create a chicane in turn 13. The FIA though doesn't want to go into this request.
"To change the course in order to help some of the teams with a performance problem caused by their failure to bring suitable equipment to the race would be a breach of the rules and grossly unfair to those teams which have come to Indianapolis with the correct tyres," said the FIA statement.
About using a different tyre that used in qualifying the FIA said in a statement: "Some of the teams have raised with us the possibility of running a tyre which was not used in qualifying. We have told them this would be a breach of the rules to be considered by the stewards. We believe the penalty would not be exclusion but would have to be heavy enough to ensure that no team was tempted to use qualifying tyres in the future."
Have heard also that Michelin is advising a maximum safe speed to take turn 13. The Bridgestone runners should be able to blow right by the Michelin teams there.
They wont let them use new tyres without punishment either, Charlie Whiting: “We believe the penalty would not be exclusion but would have to be heavy enough to ensure that no team was tempted to use qualifying tyres in the future.”
The only alternative for michelin runners is to pit every 10 laps to change tyres, - the numbers of laps michelin have said their typres are safe for!!
Please keep it on the track and pointed in the right direction.
Thank you.
This is 1/1000 chance to be on the podium if they start with only six cars
I'm liking the optimism