The chaos with the tyres was caused by the rain. The director of Michelin, Pierre Dupasquier, admitted before the race that he did not know if it were possible to refuel if a car  went in to change extreme rain tyres for other intermediates. Luckily, during the GP there was no change in the weather; otherwise the chaos would have been considerable. The regulation is clear when the circuit is dry, but if rain appears it gets more complicated.

 

The unknowns in the regulation concerning engines were also clear. Michael Schumacher, Takuma Sato and Jenson Button decided to change the engine after the flying lap on the Saturday. The punishment was to start at the back of the grid but their qualifying laps had been really bad so in the end it was six of one or half a dozen, since they would race with a new engine, whereas their rivals had already done 200km with their engines. Moreover the BAR Honda duo made a pit stop on the last lap of the race (they occupied positions 12 and 13) so that they can use another engine in the next GP, in Malaysia. They did it quite openly and they will probably not receive a penalty.

 

The novel system of classification was not very successful either, although it was partly the fault of the rain. David Coulthard, in spite of being among the most favoured, was very critical "It was a farce, since for some of us it was a handicap. What happened to Massa is a good example. He started with dry tyres and it began to rain. That was his qualifying lap. All the work down the drain simply because it began to rain. We should do it like they do in training for MotoGP, it is so much more exciting ".