USA: Race in danger as Michelin look for answers

By Phil Huff
June 19 2005

The United States Grand Prix has been thrown into doubt following Michelin's current refusal to guarantee their tyres are safe to run the 73 laps at Indianapolis.

Toyota suffered a serious tyre failure in practice on Friday, sending Ralf Schumacher into the wall and out of the race weekend. Other tyres from cars along the grid were examined, with many showing similar tyres of wear pattern as on Schumacher's car.

"One of the things we have been trying to do is to understand why we had the tyre deflation and what caused that," said Nick Shorrock, Michelin's F1 director. "What we have not been able to do is recreate via the tests that we have done, that failure."

It's that failure to recreate the problem that is causing the issues at Indianapolis. "With the information that we have right now," Shorrock told Autosport, "we feel we don't have enough information to say to our teams 'you can do a full 73 laps satisfactorily'. So for the time being that's where we are.

"With the information we've got now, we don't believe we can use the tyres that we have got here."

One option for the French manufacturer is to fly in new tyres, and we hear that a plane load is already on its way to the circuit. However, before using them they'll need clearance from not only the FIA, but every team unanimously, including the Bridgestone shod Ferrari team.

"We've been back to see the FIA," said Shorrock. "They hear us and for the time being they haven't given us a final decision other than to say that until 12.30pm tomorrow, there have been no rules broken. That, obviously, is when the cars go onto the grid and the FIA starts checking the tyres."

Bringing new tyres in also throws open a new risk, as no other specification of tyre has been designed specifically to run at Indianapolis. The teams would then be forced to run these without having any setup data or experience.

To confuse matters further, several Michelin teams, including BAR Honda and Williams, are reporting that their cars are running perfectly well on the current tyres, realistically throwing out the prospect of unanimous agreement between the teams. That leaves a very real possibility of only 10 or 12 cars lining up for today's race.

With less than 12 cars on the grid, the entire race could be cancelled.

Ultimately, it's the safety of the public and drivers that must be the key concern. However, should the race be cancelled, then the sport of Formula One in the United States will suffer in a country that barely registers the fact that F1 exists.

The situation is unlikely to be resolved until shortly before the race, so keep checking SauberSpeak.co.uk for details.