This weekend didn’t really start how it supposed to; although the 1^st free practice was OK with Jarno 13^th, Ralf 12^th and Ricardo 2^nd. The drama started during the 2^nd free practice when Ricardo spun of at the exit of turn 5 due to a left rear tyre failure. He completed only 6 laps because they stopped early in the session. He ended as 19^th. Minutes later there was a crash by Ralf, identical as last years’ crash in his BMW Williams, at turn 13. At the end of the day both drivers were OK.

Something remarkable was that the cause of Ralf’s crash was exactly the same as Ricardo’s…yes…very remarkable.

Fortunately there was one Toyota driver left that didn’t crash; Jarno Trulli completed 10 laps and got the 10^th time. The car felt competitive enough for a good result this weekend. The only thing that slowed them down was the mysterious tyre problem.

Time for the next practice sessions, but this time without Ralf Schumacher. After a medical examination Dr Gary Hartstein decided that it wouldn’t be the right decision to let Ralf drive again. Ricardo Zonta took his place.

The 3^rd practice session revealed that Toyota wasn’t the only one with the tyre problem; almost every Michelin driver avoided turn 13 by driving through the pitlane…and that can’t be good!

Hereby Jarno and Ricardo didn’t set a time.

That was a different story in the final session. Everybody drove through turn 13 again. Trulli set the 7^th time and Ricardo the 9^th.

It was 20.00 o’clock, which meant the qualification of the US Grand Prix was about to begin. First Toyota-driver out to qualify was Ricardo Zonta who took Ralf’s place. He had the disadvantage of starting first, but Zonta did a good job by keeping seven drivers behind which put him 13^th on the grid.

It’s Trulli’s turn, with a very fast out-lap he’s entering sector one…. and ahead of Jenson Button who had set the fastest time…until now! After sector two he is still faster than Button. Time for the last sector and my hard was beating faster and faster. He was 0.652 seconds faster than Button! That was an amazingly fast lap I thought in myself! He was the quickest man so far…but I had to cool down because it didn’t mean he had P1 yet; there were still 10 drivers to set their flying lap. The number of remaining drivers got smaller and smaller and then it was Kimi Räikkönen’s turn to qualify. In the first sector he is fortunately slower than our Jarno but only a tenth of a second! Sector two and Raikkonen is two-tenths faster than Jarno. I almost got a heart attack because Jarno could win his first ever pole with his new team!…..Thank god Räikkönen was two-tenths slower than Jarno in the last sector and by that didn’t manage to take the pole position away from Jarno Trulli!

After that I was so relieved; Toyota finally grabbed their first ever pole!

A few hours after the qualification there was suddenly told in a press release that the Michelin tyres weren’t safe enough to race all 73 laps. Michelin advised all 7 Michelin teams not to take part of the US Grand Prix due the safety of the drivers.

As the Grand Prix was approaching Michelin was searching like hell for a solution. A whole package of new Michelin-tyres, who actually were made for Spain, was send from France to Indianapolis. They asked the FIA if there could made an one-time exception to save the US Grand Prix by using the new tyres (which is against the rules). I really didn’t see a chance of the FIA approving that! And I was right…they didn’t agree with the proposal. And if the Michelin-teams did use the new tyres there would be a very heavy punishment waiting for them…and yeah…they absolutely didn’t want that…so they dragged that idea out of their head! The FIA told Michelin and the Michelin-teams they had a few options:

• Compete in the Grand Prix with a limited speed through turn 13.
• Compete in the Grand Prix and avoid turn 13 by driving through the pit lane.
• Compete in the Grand Prix and change the tyres when necessary and aloud.

Michelin, on the other hand, didn’t find that good options and thereby ‘ignored’ them.

The next day, Sunday, the Michelin-teams made another proposal to the FIA and the Bridgestone-teams. They wanted to put a chicane at turn 13 to reduce the speed, and then it would be possible for the tyres to hold up the whole race. I really found that a nice idea and hoped that they would agree! A few hours later there was announced that nine teams agreed that if there wasn’t going to come a chicane in turn 13 they weren’t going to race. Nine teams agreed, and there are ten teams, as you might know. One team didn’t agree and put the final decision with the FIA. The name of that one team could you actually guess without having it wrong, as they frequently disagree with the rest. Yes…it is Ferrari who rejected the proposal. This would mean that nine teams weren’t going to compete in the Grand Prix of the United States!

There was allot of misunderstanding whether they were going to race or not…. until a few minutes before the start of the race. When I was watching TV our pit reporter, of the Dutch channel SBS6, picked up a conversation between Ron Dennis and Flavio Briatore. They said: ‘Only a formation lap’. Then I knew that this was going to be the farce of the century!

Bernie Ecclestone counted on a full grid…. well…he got that…. but only for a formation lap!

As the lights went out for the in-lap everybody in the audience was cheering, because they were going to race…. they thought! When the man on pole, Jarno Trulli, entered the pit lane followed by the rest of the Michelin-teams, the audience screamed ‘BOO’ and throwed things like beer and water on the circuit.

Time for the race to start and sad to say there are only 6 cars on the starting grid…. Ferrari, Minardi and Jordan. There really wasn’t anything spectacular going on in the race…. well…maybe there was one little thing what was close to exciting. That moment was when Michael Schumacher came out the pit lane for his second stop and drove into turn one together with Rubens Barichello. It was quite close but Barichello was the one who had to give up to avoid a touché. I was quite amazed that Schumacher remained in P1 because it looked like Rubens Barichello was right. With 19 laps to go the winner of the US Grand Prix was actually already known as Michael Schumacher, because you know he won’t let anyone past him…over his dead body! The two Ferrari’s cruised their way to the finish while, the battle for the 3^rd place was also ended, and the winner of that battle was Jordan’s Tiago Monteiro.  The Indian Narain Karthikeyan was fourth and my countryman Christijan Albers was 5^th with 15.5 seconds ahead of his teammate Friesacher who ended 6^th.

This was the dramatically end and historical Grand Prix of Indianapolis 2005!

This Grand Prix, which I hardly can call a ‘Grand Prix’ (maybe Petit Prix!), was everything except something positive for Toyota…Ok…except Toyota’s first ever pole position by Jarno Trulli! They left the United States without a point, which put Jarno Trulli back in 5^th place with still 27 points in the drivers’ championship and Toyota with 47 points fifth in the constructors’ championship.

After the two oversea Grand Prix’ were heading back to Europe for some testing at Jerez de la Frontera and on the 3^rd of July the Grand Prix of France.

Let’s hope for a stunning result at the next GP and that this bizarre event will never occur again. With this Grand prix Formula One showed how important the safety of the people is.

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