ECCLESTONE BACKS MICHELIN

"The bottom line really and truly is no-one wanted to deceive anyone," he added. "In the end the bottom line was there were no options. "The way things have been dealt with, especially by Michelin, has been really good. They have stood up like men and said, 'We made a mistake and we are prepared to pay for it.' "There were no options - if there were we would have taken them. "Everybody did what they thought was the right thing to do and with hindsight it probably was. We are sorry, we are there to entertain." He said: "I am pleased in a lot of ways that we didn't race, had we done that maybe those tyres wouldn't have lasted even with a chicane or two chicanes.
"Maybe they were just not up to it so maybe one of the other corners we would have had the same problem. "I think we could easily have lost somebody there so maybe we got lucky." Far from terminally damaging the sport in the United States, Ecclestone signs up to the view that any publicity is good publicity. He is taking solace from the fact that "we are well known in America now" and hopes greater efforts to promote the Indianapolis race next season will draw even bigger crowds. "You have to look to the good in anything, even with the bad you have to look to the good. "There's nothing really positive expect we could have learned a lesson from this, that's a about it. "I think if we do our job right, help promote the race and Michelin get behind us, which I'm sure they will, we will see it much bigger."

Indiana law means the teams could have been charged with endangering lives even if an accident had not occurred, while the repercussions in the event of a serious smash would have been much worse.
something to think about -
so what have we now - a maybe F1 in the US, a Champ car series in the US and a IRL series in the US where the teams are leaving - and what happened to the Cart series?