Is the FiA the stupidest governing body in all of motorsports?

From Formula1.com:

"The FIA also outlined a number of other options available to the Michelin teams, including running more slowly in Turn 13, running new tyres and incurring a penalty, or repeatedly changing tyres, subject to valid safety reasons."

It seems the Michelin runners did not want to incur the penalty for running new tires, the FIA will not stop you from running tires that are not legal, they will just penalize you for doing so.

 

the fia is being ruined... not just for f1, but for wrc as well, they need to get max out of it, and start returning it to how it used to be...

 

True fans will keep watching becasue a true fan knows they did the right thing by not allowing any changes to the circuit or the rules.

 

I am a true fan and have been watching for many years and will continue to watch as long as there is something to watch (with a factory Ferrari team). I also think they did the right thing this weekend upholding the rules, but they have tried their damnedest to ruin the sport for the last 10 years. Every year they come up with new rules to help any other team to beat Ferrari, they also make these rediculous cost savings rules and have yet to save any money. The budgets are higher than they have ever been. I would like to see a lot of these rules to be lifted and just let the manufacturer come to the table with a car that is the pinnacle of technology and race to see who can put the best team together. If a team cannot compete with a teams budget or technology, then get better engineers and more money or chose a different series there is plenty of room in other series.

 

The FIA is there to enforce rules. And they did that.

It does not exist to market or promote the various motorsports. That, in this case, would be F1 itself. Thus, F1 is responsible for "satisfying the market."

You cannot blame the FDA if you bought a bottle of aspirins and it was missing several pills.

 

A chicane that was not previously safety tested would not have been entirely safe either. If someone got to excited and had an accident, well that is a possiblility at any corner on any track.

 

The FIA would have been acting irresponsibly by agreeing to modify the racetrack with a chicane without any prior testing. No one would have known how the tires chosen with a different layout would have worked with a chicane slowing the cars down right before the start of the highest speed area of the track. If accidents had occurred, the FIA would have been in deep legal doo doo for failing to follow its own procedures for track safety evaluation. Charlie Whiting of the FIA stated so in his reply to Michelin.

 

I understand that the replacement tyres Michelin had were of the same sidewall design, and they couldn't guaruntee safety either. That is the reason that they weren't used.

The FIA offered some unrealistic options to the Michelin teams, and the Michelin teams offered a very realistic option to the FIA/Bridgestone teams. But the FIA/Bridgestone teams stood their ground, rightly or wrongly, and everyone lost out.

 

I don't know whether the replacement tires were the same design or not, but it seems pretty stupid to send overnight tires that you cannot use that have the same problem. So they brought an inferior product to a race and then tried to correct it with another set of inferior tires, wow. My understanding was the replacement tires had not been tested for the track (again because Michelin opted not to earlier in the season) so that is why they did not know if they would last or not.

It is total and utter BS that Michelin offered a realistic option. Of course their option was to break more rules by creating a potentially disasterous course that they could run slow enough on. The FIA would be breaking (not bending) the rules to allow a chicane that had not been safety tested. The Michelin had 3 days to offer solutions to the problem and even flew in (again inadequate equipment) and in the 11th hour tried to strong arm the FIA into making the most drastic change they could think of. Now Michelin/the 7 teams/their drivers/and their fans want to shift the blame to the FIA which followed the rules and the one of the teams that actually brought the right equipment and had absolutely no role in the discussions or decisions. Just rediculous...

 

Bluntly comments like this just p1ss me off. The REALISTIC option for the Michelin teams was to limit speed and/or downforce for the turn. NO ONE stopped them doing this.
If Ferrari could get their motor to produce another 100hp by using an extra 750rpm's, but it was unreliable at some events if engine temps were too high, because of sustained high RPM sections, what would the solution be based on the BS debate doing the rounds at the moment??
1. Postpone the race until temps were lower.
2. Alter the track such that the overheating problem is resolved.
3. Make all teams drop their rev limits by 750rpm, so Ferrari kept it's relative advantage
4. Have Ferrari not use the extra revs on their car.

The debate and conjecture on the tyre issue suggests that many people see the option 4 is out of the question and that 1-3 are viable and anyone not supporting one of these is being unsportsman like.

What the frig does this have to do with the FIA or Ferrari? Am I being naive and missing something fundamental here?

 

Is this type of controversy any different from any other professional sports these days? When there are big $$ involved this kind of stuff happens. One just hopes they can keep things on the rails.

 

there have been numerous races of all different series with a chicane in the very corner they were asking for... it would have been perfectly safe, they just needed enough to slow the cars down, they could have just added some rumble strips like they do in motorcycle racing and put some lines down on the track outlining the chicane, as well as give a 30 minute practice session to get used to the new layout. also, they could have postponed the race a day until a do-able solution was created.

 

Smartest!
12 cylinders only.

 

The teams would have been crazy to agree to the chicane.

That would have completely mutated the track -- known for the longest max rev stretch in F1. Sure, the cars with iffy engines would like to break up that stretch ... but that penalizes the cars that have their engines right.

And that's a fun corner for both the drivers and fans -- and even for the engineers who enjoy a good challenge.

I disagree with a lot of what FIA has done to F1 and WRC. I've been a supporter of getting FIA away from motorsports.

But I have to side with FIA on this one. Michelin was just plain wrong to demand that the track be tailored to their tires.

 

the FIA offered 3 solutions:

- changing tyres and getting a serious penalty
as far as i understood, this was not an option for michelin, because they had no safe tyres as an alternative to provide

- enforcing a speed limit in turn 13 for the michelin-teams
for me a viable solution, because everybody knows about it, and therefore the behaviour of the drivers can be anticipated. i don't see any safety issues with this. the michelin teams get their well-earned disadvantage, ferrari gets its well earned advantage, the michelin teams fight their race between each other.

- repeatedly changing tyres during the race for security reasons
obviously the tyres were supposed to last for 10 rounds. each team could then change its tyres after each 10 laps without penalty, as the FIA offered.
the michelin teams fight their own race with their pitstops, ferrari gets the well-earned advantage.

where is the problem at all???? or am i the one to be the stupidest????

2 viable solutions compliant with the actual rules and which provide to the fans the show they want and to ferrari the well-earned victory and everybody the points it earned ....

why concentrating on a illegal chicane in order to take ferrari the advantage, then, as a compensation for it to waive the points by the michelin teams...
this idea compared to the solutions offered by the FIA (and supported by Ferrari btw) is the silliest and most irrational solution thinkable.