2005 United States Grand Prix
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The 2005 United States Grand Prix was a Formula One race held on June 19, 2005 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The race was highly controversial because only six cars competed; all fourteen Michelin runners retired after the parade lap due to a safety issue with their tyres and the newly resurfaced speedway, leaving only the Bridgestone teams — Ferrari, Minardi and Jordan — to start.
Following several tyre failures before the race, most spectacularly on Ralf Schumacher's Toyota during Friday practice, Michelin advised its seven customer teams that they could not safely race on the tyres provided for them. The FIA refused to allow a chicane to be installed, maintaining that such rule changes would be grossly unfair to the Bridgestone-shod teams, who had come prepared with properly working tires. The Michelin-shod teams, unable to come to a compromise with the FIA, did not participate in the race on safety grounds.
Of the six competitors, Ferrari's Michael Schumacher was the eventual winner. The result significantly boosted his championship standing, placing him third overall — no driver above him in the table took part in the race.
Pre-race controversy
Toyota tire failures
On Friday, June 17, during the afternoon's practice session, Ralf Schumacher crashed heavily in Turn 13 of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, apparently as a result of a tyre failure. The following day, Michelin reported that the tyres it had provided for its seven customer teams — BAR, McLaren, Red Bull, Renault, Toyota, Sauber, and Williams — were unsafe for extended use, and announced its intention to fly in another set of tyres from its Clermont-Ferrand headquarters. [1]
Minardi's Paul Stoddart later stated that the replacement tyres flown in by Michelin, which were of the type used in the Spanish Grand Prix, when simulated, turned out to have the same defect as those prepared for the Indianapolis race. [2]
Correspondence between Michelin and the FIA
In a letter to FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting, dated Saturday, June 18, Michelin representatives Pierre Dupasquier and Nick Shorrock revealed that they did not know the cause of Schumacher's tyre failure, and unless the cars could be slowed down in Turn 13, Michelin's tyres would be unsafe and unsuitable for use during the race.
Whiting replied on Sunday, June 19, expressing his surprise that Michelin had not brought along a second set of tyres, suggesting that the teams be informed of the maximum safe speed in Turn 13, and offered to monitor the turn by penalising any excess speed on the Michelin cars. He also addressed several solutions which had been proposed by the teams, insisting that use of the tyres flown in overnight would result in penalties, and the placement of a chicane in the turn was "out of the question" - the race would not be sanctioned by the FIA (a non-championship race) if the track layout was changed. He deemed the Michelin teams' proposals to be "grossly unfair" to the Bridgestone teams.
In a second letter, also dated June 19, Dupasquier and Shorrock announced that they would not permit their teams to race on Michelin's tyres, and reiterated their request to slow down Turn 13. Whiting's brief reply maintained that no such change would be permitted, and giving the teams the choiced of limiting speeds through Turn 13, using a new set of tyres subject to a penalty, or changing tyres repeatedly, which is permitted if a driver's safety is at issue (although he left open the possibility that teams which took the latter route would be penalized anyway, saying that only "if the technical delegate and the stewards were satisfied that each change was made because the tyre would otherwise fail … would [there] be no penalty.")
Attempts at compromise
Stoddart published an account of the events leading up to the race on Wednesday, June 22. While the previous developments were reported by various sources, the last-minute negotiations had theretofore been largely unknown to the public.
Stoddart recorded a meeting around 10:00am on the day of the race, to which Speedway president Tony George, "the two most senior Michelin representatives present at the circuit" (assumed to be Dupasquier and Shorrock), commercial-rights impresario Bernie Ecclestone, the team principals, and the teams' Michelin technical representatives were summoned. All invited were present except Jean Todt of Ferrari.
By Stoddart's account, the meeting proceeded as follows: The Michelin representatives stated their position that the tyres provided to the teams could not safely complete the race distance, and requested that the Bridgestone teams, represented by Stoddart and Jordan's Colin Kolles, permit the installation of a chicane in Turn 13. Those present discussed and agreed to reject the FIA's solution of speed-limiting the Michelin cars in the turn because of the potential for accidents. They likewise dismissed the possibility of making pitstops every ten laps, resolved that a chicane was the best solution, and instructed several technical representatives to prepare plans for its installation. Bernie Ecclestone volunteered to consult Todt, who had not come to the meeting, and the president of the FIA, Max Mosley, who was not present at the race, and reconvene the meeting when he had responses.
Ecclestone returned at about 10:55 to inform the group that Todt had refused to agree to the chicane, maintaining that it was Michelin's problem and not his. (Todt later denied that he had ever been consulted, but stated that he would not have agreed to the chicane anyway. [3]) Furthermore, Ecclestone reported that "Mr Mosley had stated that if any attempts were made to alter the circuit, he would cancel the Grand Prix forthwith".
The team principals' plan
The group, according to Stoddart, continued to propose alternate solutions, including "a non-championship race, or a race in which the Michelin teams could not score points, and even a race whereby only the Michelin teams used the new chicane", but eventually agreed that the best option was to install the chicane and run a non-championship race, without Ferrari if necessary. To ignore the FIA's instructions and carry on the race would have resulted in the FIA's withdrawing its staff, so the group appointed delegates to fill the various offices, including a race director to replace Charlie Whiting and a safety car driver to replace Bernd Maylander. The team principals were instructed to convey to their teams and drivers that, in the absence of FIA scrutineers and equipment, the technical rules could not be enforced, and that they were to conduct themselves honourably and in the interest of an entertaining race.
They proceeded to summon the twenty drivers and present their plan. Of the drivers' opinions, Stoddart writes: "While I cannot testify that each and every driver agreed with what we were proposing, what I can say with certainty is that no driver disagreed." The Ferrari drivers expressed no opinion in the matter, leaving the decision to Todt, who was not present.
The nine present team principals thereupon resolved that, unless they and the FIA could come to a decision in the interest of the sport, they would not participate in the race.
After a short break, the group gathered again in Ecclestone's office to find Renault team principal Flavio Briatore on the phone with Max Mosley. Mosley had apparently rejected all of their proposals, and indeed "it was stated that Mosley had informed Mr Martin, the FIA's most senior representative in the USA, that if any kind of non-championship race was run, or any alteration made to the circuit, the US Grand Prix, and indeed, all FIA-regulated motorsport in the US, would be under threat". (The FIA later denied that Mosley had said such a thing. [4])
Having exhausted their options, the Michelin team principals, Stoddart, and Bernie Ecclestone — but not Jordan's Colin Kolles — discussed whether their cars should proceed to the grid, and decided that they should participate in the formation lap but retire before the start of the race. Stoddart went to the Jordan garage to ask Kolles if he would be entering his cars, despite having agreed not to do so, and was informed that Jordan would indeed be racing. Upon being approached by a Bridgestone representative and told that Bridgestone wanted him to race, and considering the heavy penalties he would face for not racing, he too decided to enter his drivers, but promised to retire them if the Jordans did not finish the race.
Race report
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To the fans in attendance, the start of the race appeared perfectly normal, as all cars lined up on the grid per FIA race procedure. As Charlie Whiting signalled the green light to start the formation lap, a full grid of twenty cars took off, presumably for one last attempt to warm their tyres before the race. Winding through the first twelve turns, all looked to be standard. At the banked turn thirteen, the entrance to the pit lane (and the turn that is the centre of the controversy), all teams that ran Michelin tyres returned to their pits, leaving just six cars to take the grid for the start of the race, from Ferrari, Jordan, and Minardi.
The move by the teams, to come to the grid and then pull out after the formation lap into the pits, infuriated the fans, as they had little idea what was happening. Loud boos were heard and some threw items on the track. The race quickly turned into what SPEED commentator Bob Varsha called "a Bridgestone test session", with Ferrari's Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello in front, Jordan's Tiago Monteiro and Narain Karthikeyan in a distant third and fourth, and Minardi's Christijan Albers and Patrick Friesacher bringing up the rear.
The race was a story of pit strategy, as the only passing outside of pit stops was to overtake lapped traffic. Albers was the only car to run a three pit stop race, as all other cars chose to stop only twice. The only lead changes came on lap 26, as Schumacher's 32 second stop gave Barrichello the lead, and on lap 51, as Schumacher turned in the quickest pit stop at 23.615 seconds, giving him enough time to exit pit lane at the same time as Barrichello, with the result of forcing Barrichello into the grass of turn one. After this incident, which was not investigated by race officials, both Ferrari drivers were reminded over their radios not to crash out of the race, and they both settled into a slower pace, comfortably ahead of the rest of the field. At the podium ceremony, at which none of the scheduled presenters were present, all Ferrari team members quietly accepted their awards, and quickly exited, leaving the rookie Monteiro to celebrate his first podium finish alone.
Martin Brundle's grid interview with Bernie Ecclestone
Martin: Bernie, there’s nowhere to go now, is there – you’re painted in a corner. What are you going to do? You’re the promoter, we look like we might have just four cars starting this race...
Bernie: Well, it looks like there’s a lot more cars here, uh? I’m not the promoter either, but, no, they’re all here…
Martin: But I’m told that even the Minardis may peel off and come into the pits at the end of the warm-up lap and only four cars will come down the start line. They may all be here at the moment...
Bernie: Well, you know so why are you asking me…
Martin: Well, I want to know if I’m right or not!
Bernie: You wait and see.
Martin: They’ve been told they can’t go flat-out around the track, and if they go slow it’s more dangerous. I mean, you can’t have 14 cars driving effectively a different racetrack.
Bernie: The problem has been caused by the tyres, obviously – Michelin brought the wrong tyres, it’s as simple as that.
Martin: But surely in the interests of Formula 1 you must have been screaming at the lot of them saying, “Sort yourselves out. This is what I’m going to do here, I’m taking charge here.”
Bernie: Yeah, but the difference is you can’t tell people to do something when the tyre company has said you can’t race on those tyres.
Martin: Did we need some more control of the paperwork that’s been flying about and the meetings? Could we not bang some heads together and just get this sorted out last night?
Why are we standing on the grid…you’re asking me what’s going on and I’m asking you what’s going on…
Bernie: I wish I knew. The problem is simple, as I say. There are not the tyres here where the tyre company feels confident that those tyres are OK, especially on that banking.
Martin: The future of F1 in America? The future of Michelin in F1?
Bernie: Not good.
Martin: On both counts?
Bernie: Both counts.
Martin: What will happen this week, will they be slapped in some court?
Bernie: We’ll have to see. It’s early days, we don’t know. I mean, I feel sorry for the public. I feel sorry for the promoter here.
Martin: I feel sorry for my eight million mates sitting at home looking forward to a good grand prix. Go and bang their heads together – but it’s too late now, we’ve run out of time, haven’t we?
Bernie: Well, let’s see what happens now. People shouldn’t give up on Formula 1 because of this one incident. The incident’s not the fault of the teams, to be honest with you.
What Michelin have said is that if they put a chicane in that corner then it would be OK, they could run. And it’s been decided not to put it in so that’s it.
Martin: Yeah, but they didn’t intentionally bring tyres that were not up to it. They’ve just obviously been caught out by something – a bad batch or this new diamond-cut surface. We saw Bridgestone having tyres fail in Barcelona with the safety car situation.
Surely we just have to have a sensible pill and say, OK, this is the situation we find ourselves in – let’s take a sensible solution and go motor racing.
Bernie: Tell me where we can buy the pills…
Martin: We need to talk to Mrs Ecclestone, maybe this needs a woman’s common sense here. Ah, Mrs Ecclestone – this needs a woman’s intuition on this, don’t you think?
Mrs Ecclestone: Nothing to say, nothing to say…
Martin: I think maybe you should have had something to say and given them a jolly good slapping!
Refusal of coverage
Several TV stations refused to carry the US GP after the retirement of all the Michelin runners.
TSN in Canada refused to air the race, and provided only the post-race show. As TSN was airing the race on tape-delay, it just provided the live-to-tape post-race coverage in place of pre-race and race coverage. At the time that the debacle unfolded, TSN was televising the NASCAR Batman Begins 400 at Michigan Speedway.
Aftermath
The race had implications in the championship points standings, as Michael Schumacher moved from fifth to third, Rubens Barrichello moved from sixth to fourth, Ferrari moved from fifth to second in the Constructors Championship, and both Jordan and Minardi scored points, leaving BAR-Honda as the only team yet to score a single point. However, these were dwarfed by the recriminations over the failure to find a solution which would have prevented the withdrawal of the Michelin-shod teams.
Bernie Ecclestone, in answer to a question by ITV's Martin Brundle in an interview just before the start of the race, described the future of Formula One in the United States and the future of Michelin in the sport as "not good". He also said that the "incident's not the fault of the teams, to be honest with you." [5]
Many commentators labelled the race a "farce" and questioned whether a United States Grand Prix will be held in Indianapolis again or at all. More seriously, some pointed to the previous disagreements between the teams and Max Mosley (which had led to the threatened creation of the GPWC as a spin-off from Formula One) as a critical factor in the reasons behind the failure to reach a compromise, and felt that the events at this race had greatly increased the risk of a complete rupture. [6]
Sam Posey, a former SPEED Channel commentator who competed in the 1972 United States Grand Prix, the only Grand Prix he ever competed in, gave his thoughts on the race at the end of SPEED's telecast. He ended his essay by saying, "U.S. GP 2005 — a dark, dark day for a great sport." Before he said that, however, he had a very philosophical way of describing Grand Prix racing:
- "Grand Prix racing at its best is a modern marvel of excesses, immense cost, furious competition, amazing technology, and sudden changes of fortune, all conducted at maximum intensity. At its worst, which is what we have seen today, it is an overly political monster, driven by selfishness and greed."
Minardi boss Paul Stoddart said immediately after the race that nine teams – all but Ferrari – agreed not to race, and had Jordan not reversed its decision at the last minute, Minardi would also have withdrawn from the race in a boycott. [7] In his later, lengthier, statement, he indicated that although it had been Michelin's failure to provide a reliable tyre which had initiated the events, he laid the full blame for the failure to reach some accommodation (which would have allowed a race to happen, for the benefit of the many fans who had paid considerable money for travel and tickets) at the feet of Max Mosley and the FIA, with a small share of the blame going to what he characterized as the obstructionist Ferrari team leader, Jean Todt. He furthermore called for Mosley's resignation.
The FIA's reaction
The following day, the FIA published a justification of its refusal to permit a change in tyres or the installation of a chicane.
That same day, the FIA summoned the seven Michelin-shod teams before the World Motorsport Council at the FIA headquarters in France, for a hearing on June 29th, to explain their failure to participate, by which they had presumably violated the terms of the Concorde Agreement. It later published copies of the letters sent to each team "in the interests of transparency". They have been charged with violating article 151c of the International Sporting Code, which refers to acts prejudicial to the interests of competition or motorsport generally. [8] Specifically, it was charged that they had:
- Failed to ensure that you had a supply of suitable tyres for the race.
- Wrongfully refused to allow your cars to start the race
- Wrongfully refused to allow your cars to race subject to a speed restriction at one corner, which was safe for such tyres as you had available.
- Combined with other teams to make a demonstration damaging to the image of Formula 1 by pulling into the pits immediately before the start of the race.
- Failed to notify the stewards of your intention not to race.
On June 22 the FIA produced a press release from Max Mosley, in the form of a question-and-answer session [9], in an effort to clarify the FIA's stand on the whole controversy. He drew an analogy to a hypothetical situation where the engines from one manufacturer had oil starvation problems due to high lateral loading in one corner, and pointed out that those cars would simply have been forced to run slower as a result. He reiterated that the reason for not installing the chicane was purely on the basis that it was never tested and thereby deemed unsafe. He pointed out that the alternatives that the FIA suggested were feasible, and wondered why the teams did not use the pitlane as an alternative, especially when there were still two places with potential championship points open.
On June 29 the FIA World Motorsport Council found the teams guilty of the first two counts, that is, of not being in possession of suitable tyres for the event, but with strong mitigating circumstances, and that of wrongfully refusing to allow their cars to start the race. The teams were found not guilty of the other three counts. The punishment, however, was not decided, and was not to have been announced until September 14. [10]
On July 22, the FIA World Motorsport Council voted to overturn its previous decision, and has exonorated the Michelin teams of all charges. The decision was due to "evidence previously submitted to the FIA Senate"[11], rumoured to be that had the Michelin teams raced, they could be held accountable, according to Indiana state law, stating that it is an offence to knowingly put others at risk, even if no accident occurs. BBC account
Compensation
On June 28, Michelin announced that it would offer compensation to all race fans who had purchased tickets for the Grand Prix. By the end of September, the company had issued refund checks through the Speedway ticket office for the price of all tickets for the race. Additionally, Michelin purchased 20,000 tickets for the 2006 race to be distributed to spectators who renewed their 2005 ticket orders for the event, two additional tickets per order.
In addition to the refunded tickets, there was some discussion about holding a second, non-championship race at Indianapolis. On July 2, at the 2005 French Grand Prix, McLaren team principal Ron Dennis suggested that an additional race could be held at the American circuit after the last official race of the season, in Shanghai. The teams had, apparently, already discussed the idea with Bernie Ecclestone. But the next day Tony George dismissed the possibility: "There will be no race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this fall." [12]
At the 2005 Champ Car World Series Grand Prix of Cleveland, which was held one week after the US Grand Prix, free admission was granted to all bearers of ticket stubs of the US Grand Prix.
Classification
Qualifying
Race
Notes
- Pole position: Jarno Trulli 1:10.625
- Fastest lap: Michael Schumacher 1:11.497
- All six starters finished the race, making this only the second time in Formula One history where every car that started a race went on to complete it.
- Michael Schumacher's first and only victory of 2005 ended the second-longest non-winning streak of his career.
- Jordan driver Tiago Monteiro's third place earned him the first podium finish of his career, and the first podium for a Portuguese driver.
External links
- Facsimiles of correspondence from June 1 and 2 between Michelin sporting director Pierre Dupasquier and FIA president Max Mosley regarding tyre safety (pdf)
- Facsimiles of the Michelin/Whiting letters exchanged at Indianapolis on June 18–19:
- Michelin's first letter (pdf)
- Whiting's first reply (pdf)
- Michelin's second letter (pdf)
- Whiting's second reply (pdf)
- Facsimiles of the letters sent to each team informing them of the charges against them (pdf)
- Questions to Max Mosley about the events of the race
- "A Personal Account of Events Surrounding the 2005 US Grand Prix" by Paul Stoddart, Minardi team owner