Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

Imagine if, the morning of the Super Bowl, players declared the stadium surface too dangerous to play on, having witnessed during practice injuries caused by rips in the artificial turf. Imagine if, having the NFL brush off their concerns, all but six players walked off the field at kickoff. And imagine if, with only six players on the field, the Super Bowl was played anyway.

That's pretty much what happened at Sunday's US Grand Prix. Maybe it's not the Super Bowl of Formula One Racing, but the race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway is certainly extremely important for a circuit that has tried and failed for more than 50 years to gain a foothold in the United States. (Generally, a lack of American drivers is blamed for US indifference.) In fact, the race was such a debacle it brought up questions not only about the future of Formula One in the United States, but the future of the circuit in general. It's certainly going to make the next business school case study of how not to win over an audience.

Twenty cars were supposed to start the race; 14 of them pulled off after a parade lap to protest Formula One seemingly insisting they race on unsafe Michelin tires. The tires fell apart going into the last of the course's 13 turns, the only banked one on the course. Two drivers crashed in that turn during practices (Turn 1 at the speedway's oval races.) Formula One's powers-that-be wouldn't allow Michelin to send new tires to the race, citing a rule that teams can only bring one set of tires. The Ferrari team, which wasn't driving Michelins, vetoed a plan by the nine other teams to have a chicane — a tight turn that would slow speeds — put into Turn 13.

So the six cars driving on Bridgestone Firestone tires ran the 73-lap race. With the often-dominant Ferrari team racing against the always-struggling Jordan Toyota and Minardi teams, the racing resembled what you'd see at a kiddie go-kart track — two cars way ahead, two cars kind of in the middle, and two others way behind. All the cars needed was someone pulling a string to start the engine and signs pasted on the cars reading, "No Bumping Allowed."

As you can imagine, the 100,000 fans in attendance — a large crowd for a Formula One race, but about one-third of what the track draws for Indy-car and NASCAR racing — did not cotton to this.

Many fans left early, vowing never to return. Those who stayed, booed. Some who booed threw bottles and debris onto the track in protest. Rubens Barrichello, one of the Ferrari team members and the race's second-place finisher, exploded bottles with his car's rear tires. Michael Schumacher, Barrichello's teammate and winner of his fourth US Grand Prix since the race was revived in 2000, said at a post-race news conference that he could smell the beer. In his "victory" lap, he shrugged his shoulders while his mechanics stayed put instead of rushing the winner's podium, as usually happens.

Schumacher and Barrichello didn't do the typical post-race victory podium champagne spraying, either. That was left to third-place finisher Tiago Montiero, whose overenjoyment at finishing third in a tarnished race made him look like Roberto Begnini at the Oscars. (Like Begnini, Montiero is likely to return to obscurity after his fluke of a moment in the sun.)

There was no way to spin this debacle. The announcers on SpeedChannel, the cable network that televised the race in America, spent the US Grand Prix talking up how pathetic the whole thing was.

SpeedChannel was there for all the worst moments. After the race, they showed a Formula One marketing nobody coming out to tell the top three finishers that he would be the guy presenting their trophies. Other Formula One types, as well as Indianapolis Motor speedway owner Tony George and other track officials who might have made the presentations, were no-shows.

Barrichello: "We're going to have a lot of boos."

Marketing flunky: "We can handle boos."

What Formula One might not be able to handle is the blasting it will take in the world press. The US Grand Prix — which has gone through nine sites in 50 years, making it the most itinerant of any country's race — is scheduled for next year, but will anybody risk paying for it? Probably not the thousands reported to have stormed the ticket office demanding their money back, like Paul Dooley's "Refund? Refund?" nightmare in Breaking Away.

As for the worldwide ramifications, the debacle is sure to intensify the criticism against Formula One's autocratic Bernie Ecclestone, who runs the series with such an iron fist that NASCAR's France family and the Indy Racing League's George look like collectivists by comparison. Ecclestone has generally complained that the US Grand Prix's past failures were the fault of the tracks that ran the races. By pulling the trigger for this year's mini-race, he can't pass off that excuse.

If the NFL had only six players in the Super Bowl, it might recover because football is beloved in the United States. Forumla One having only six cars in its US race faces almost no chance for recovery for a series that isn't much loved in the first place.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.