sportsillustrated.com, in their article F1 drivers were desperate to race quote an interview with Frank Williams:

Indianapolis promoter Tony George and Formula One commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone had both agreed to the chicane in a meeting with teams on Saturday night but FIA president Max Mosley had vetoed it.

"Bernie called (FIA race director) Charlie (Whiting) on Saturday night and said get on with it," said Williams, who pointed out several precedents including the 1994 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.

He said it was to be expected that the FIA would blame the teams, with all seven summoned to a World Motor Sport Council meeting on June 29 for acts prejudicial to the interest of the competition.

However, he pointed out that the teams did not make the tyres and said Michelin had informed them late in the day of the problems.

That sounds like dynamite to me - and Frank Williams isn't known for lying or mis-quoting.

Bernie must be steaming. The Guardian says Ecclestone could face £7.4m lawsuit. Normally it would be Bernie and the track owner exposed financially, but the FIA is about to feel it too with at least one lawsuit so far against the FIA (reported by indystar.com)

Barichello also suggested the most sensible option within the rules, that the teams could run through the pits every couple of laps to avoid turn 13, although a busier pitlane has it's own safety issues.

My mate Nick and I came up with probably half a dozen ways to solve the problem this morning. My favourite is to amend the rules to allow tyre change at any pitstop, each time incurring a 10 or 20 second penalty. You would never do it unless you really had to - but if all Michelin teams pitted 5 times for tyres (Michelin said it would be safe if they changed tyres every 10 laps) then they would have been racing each other for the minor points. This would also have legitimised the points haul by the Bridgestone teams as a reward for being well prepared.

Of course the problem is not that no options were given the go-ahead : no options were seriously entertained by Max or Bernie. In the words of Neil Crompton, "The answer is no - what's the question?". And that is the real problem. The Indianapolis owners were not asked about the feasability of the chicane, the FIA did not suggest any ideas to solve the problem, even their pseudo-suggestion of "drive slower" had no meat to it about how accidents might be avoided behind heavily breaking Michelin shod cars...

Now the FIA is blaming the teams and looking for a rule to penalise them under (Michelin teams summoned by FIA [f1.com]), Race boycotts are a realistic option (grandprix.com), and I don't want to have to wait for 2008 to see another F1 race!