Drivers and team chiefs fear Formula One in America may never recover after Sunday`s US Grand Prix charade.
Only the six cars on Bridgestone tyres took part after a row over additional track safety measures once a practice crash alerted Michelin to the fact they had a problem.
Fans and Indianapolis track officials were fuming after Sunday`s farce saw world champion Michael Schumacher claim his first win of the year ahead of Ferrari team-mate Rubens Barichello to give Ferrari 18 championship points which puts them joint second with McLaren.
"It`s a disaster for Formula One in the States," said Williams driver Nick Heidfeld.
His boss Frank Williams said "the sport was damaged, maybe irrevocably so in North America."
Canada`s Sauber-Petronas driver Jacques Villeneuve said he could understand the angry reaction of fans. "If I was a fan out there I would do the same," he said. Asked how long he thought it would take the sport to recover, he said "In America, I don`t think it will."
The 100,000 crowd had no idea of the problem until the 14 cars on Michelin tyres pulled into the pit lane after the warm-up lap leaving only six cars on the grid.
Fans booed and threw bottles onto the track. By the end of the race there was only a few thousand fans left, with F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone being hassled. After the race, Indianapolis Motor Speedway chief executive Tony George gave them the addresses of Michelin, the International Automobile Federation and Ecclestone`s Formula One Management.
Red Bull`s British driver David Coulthard said : "I`ve not experienced anything like this in my career before. Frankly, I`m embarrassed. This is going to leave a long-lasting bitter taste in people`s mouths."
The teams on Michelin tyres did not take part because they believed a chicane should have been added to slow down the final turn where Ralf Schumacher`s tyre inexplicably blew on Friday. F1 officials and Ferrari refused to sanction the proposal, which was backed by the nine other teams.
"I can tell you this, we feel as victimized as the fans do in what they witnessed today," Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Joie Chitwood said. He said the FIA had not asked them to set up a chicane. "That decision was out of our control," he said. "We were not privy to that."
Ferrari, suffering no problems with their Bridgestone tyres, declined to back the plan, and Michelin advised their teams not to race because they couldn`t guarantee the safety of the tyres.
End of the warm-up lap
Chitwood said it was still too soon to talk of severing ties with Formula One, but he hinted that the speedway would want more say in future events. "We`ll be evaluating our position on what`s going to happen in the future," he said.
The farce had an immediate impact on Michelin on the Paris stock exchange with share marked down 2.5 percent in early trading. Michelin race director Pierre Dupasquier defended the decision to advise teams to pull out.
"The tyres were not adapted to the special characteristics of the Indianapolis track," he said. He said the difference with last year was that the new rules forced teams to use tyres longer. "It was not a flaw (in the tyre) but a specific we had not calculated," he said.
Asked if he felt Michelin had been hurt by the incident, he said : "We could have feared prejudice if we had not taken that decision, if we had been irresponsible."
He went on : "There are different types of risk. If you make a trapeze with an old piece of string which you know will break after a dozen swings and you tell the trapeze artist to get on, then you put his life in danger, above the risk he knowingly takes."
He said the team bosses had backed their decision. "They followed us and understood because they`re engineers," he added.
But ordinary fans can only wonder why motor racing`s governing body could fail so lamentably to find a solution.

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