Normally I'm up for blaming the FIA and/or Bernie for everything, but I don't know that it's really their fault that the Michelin tires couldn't handle the stress of the oval in high temperatures! That's why there were only six cars racing: all the Michelin cars had to pull out, leaving only the Bridgestone teams running.
Where the politics came in, I guess, was that (from what I read) all the teams had agreed to adding a chicane to slow down the oval section, so the Michelins would be able to cope. But for some reason they couldn't get that solution approved officially in time to set it up.
I pretty much had lost interest in F1 starting a couple of seasons ago, when it was blatantly obvious that Bernie was manipulating the rules for Schumacher's benefit (well, not him personally so much as to make sure that the championship went to someone from a demographically desirable country, not a low-population, low-marketing-value country such as, er, Finland.) And last year's "Formula Ferrari" season was absurd. But this year, in spite of how goofy the qualifying rules seemed, I'd have to admit that the racing has been much more interesting and less predictable. So it's too bad that they dropped the ball this time, particularly in the US market where they're already struggling to get F1 taken seriously.
