US GP - The Race that ended in farce

The BMW Williams F1 Team, in association with every other Michelin-supplied F1 team was forced to withdraw from the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis due to tyre safety concerns. The Michelin-shod cars all completed the formation lap and then pulled into the pits prior to the grid forming up, leaving the race to be fought out by Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, Jordan Grand Prix and Minardi Cosworth.

Problems began in free practice on Friday when two cars suffered tyre failures and further analysis led Michelin to inform its partner teams that it did not consider it safe to undertake 73 laps of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

"The long and the short of it," explained Mark Webber, "is that we were not prepared to do the race from a safety point of view. We are drivers and we wanted to race, but it was not safe."

Nick Heidfeld added: "It was very unfortunate for all of us, especially the spectators. I'm sorry, but we didn't have a choice. There was a problem on one of our tires. Only a small one, but we didn't know how bad it would be if we tried to do the race."

Webber and Heidfeld had qualified 9th and 13th respectively on the grid but once the safety concerns of Michelin were known, it was no longer feasible to have a race, despite a compromise being sought.

BMW Williams F1 Team technical director Sam Michael explained: "We tried everything get some sort of compromise where we could race for the fans. It did not happen, so we had to withdraw the cars after the formation lap. The compromise we suggested was to put a chicane at the entry to the pit lane. It was done in Barcelona in '94 with no problems at all. And, because it was a Michelin problem, and not a problem for Bridgestone, we offered that all six Bridgestone cars would take the top six grid positions and Michelin drivers would form up in their qualifying order from seventh place down. That was the offer we made, but it was rejected."

The next race is the French grand prix at Magny-Cours on July 3.

Below are the official results of the race.