Kept the fans amused. They went home happy.

Formula 1 may like to think of itself superior to other form of motorsport but there is no doubt that it can learn lessons from other championships.

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns20644.html

In case this becomes an issue.

Exactly my point, Bert. As I implied earlier, the mandatory cautions may have lessened, but didn’t fully eliminate the problem. Which makes it an unsatisfactory solution, and thus, a worse approach than F1′s.

“Why didn’t the teams use Bridgestones if they were the correct tyre to be on? That to me, at the time, seemed a no brainer too.”

Twofold answer, the limit.
1. Modern F1 cars are designed around the tyres. You can’t just stick a Michelin car onto Bridgestones and expect it to work decently, let alone work well. Modern F1 cars are too sensitive to such things, and it could cause spinouts and huge crashes or accidents.
2. All the teams have commercial agreements with Michelin. They just can’t switch onto Bridgestones. But if the teams really wanted to, I’m sure there’d have been some loophole for them. But the 1st reason makes much sense – and it’s something the teams, sensibly enough, don’t want to risk.

I am not surprised by the number of people on this debate who are well versed in NASCAR, or any other series. It shows the general love of all motorsports amongst those who frequent this site.
My main love, has and always will be Formula One, but I do on occasion follow other motorsports series and enjoy comparing them with Formula One.

Sush.

In a few brief sentences you have summed up how I felt about Indianapolis 2005. Why didn’t the teams use Bridgestones if they were the correct tyre to be on?
That to me, at the time, seemed a no brainer too.
There must have been strong reasons for why the Michelin shod teams chose ‘NOT’ to do this, reasons we will never get to know.

I still have doubts on the 2005 it-was-Michelins-fault story. Toyota had been running very aggressive rear suspension setups, which at the least aggravated the problem. No other Michelin runner had issues.

Journeyer, but there were blowouts! Kenseth for one. The Harvick-Newman (or was is the Blue deuce) looked like a lack-of-traction thing to me. And about a half dozen drivers who just had to suddenly “woah-up” because the tire fell off so fast.

Sush, Bridgestone would not have had enough tires to supply all teams. By the regulations they would have needed to be able to supply at least 60% of the teams. However, I am not sure if that means they need actual on-site tire supplies for 0% of the teams or that their production capacity can handle it.

As for the drivers complaining, especially Stewart who loves to whine and moan, NASCAR had a meeting 4-5-6-7 weeks ago about this. In the NASCAT media the meeting was labled as a shut-up-and-drive meeting. Keep your complaints in the NASCAR family. (i.e. complain to your crew-cheif, to your boss. Pass it up the line) Otherwise they would get whacked with a violation of rule 12-4-A Actions Detrimental To Stock Car Racing.

I think the worse in all this is the NASCAR media who are yelling “The fans got a race, they saw a competitive finish.” Well, NASCAR should have shortened the race by 150 laps and had a 10 lap race. Everyone knew that that there would never have been more than 10 laps of green-flag racing.

While I agree that the honourable thing would have been to cancel the race, there are logistical reasons for not doing it. We saw some of the consequences in 2005, with people throwing stuff on the track. Imagine turning loose 150-200K people, some surely well-pickled, most surely angered, in to what is essentially a residential neighborhood. It is somewhat akin to the 1955 Le Mans crash. They didn’t cancel the race, otherwise the rush of outgoing people would have prevented emergency personel comming in.

It’s common sense really and I thought most racing drivers understood about driving a bit slower to preserve their tyres. Well endurance LMP \ GT racers do.
Unless NASCAR drivers and teams can’t drive slower as they thought it wouldn’t be so spectacular?