Blah blah blah who's at fault he's greedy michelin sux blah blah. You're all missing the point.
The point is that F1's rules have a gaping wide hole in them, that resulted in a race turning into a 6 car bridgestone tire test. The rules problem is that in a field that uses one of only two tire choices, if the tire manufacturer makes a mistake on the tire composition, it could force over half of the teams to make the choice between driving unsafe cars or not participating.
Regardless of who made what mistake or got greedy, the rules problem is the root cause of the fiasco. It's 100% desirable to put tire restrictions on the teams because otherwise the teams would use it as a loophole to use softer tires during qualifying. There is a TRIVIAL solution of course, but the F1 rules committee and teams are too stuck up and bitter to consider it. Here it is:
A tire manufacturer may make available an alternate tire choice if any team determines that the previously chosen tire is unsuitable for the race or track conditions. Any team chosing to switch tires after practice or qualification will start at the back of the field. Teams chosing to swap tires after scheduled practice sessions will be authorized one practice session on the new tires prior to race day, and will not be allowed to re-qualify.
There it is, problem solved. No incentive for swapping tires, safety considerations are met, and the fans don't get shafted by a bunch of teams, drivers, manufacturers, and rules officials who can't work together when given a week to save an important race from disaster.
Edit - This is one reason why NASCAR is more popular in the states than other racing events. This sort of thing has happened numerous times in NASCAR, where a safety problem crops up right before or after a race, and instead of bickering over it and cancelling the next race or forcing entire teams out of the running, they ALWAYS come up with a solution that saves the race for the fans by the next week. Sure sometimes the solutions aren't pretty, such as the season where they tried bolting a 1 inch tall strip across the roofs of all the cars to break up the aero profile, but at least they give it a shot instead of just giving up like a bunch of uncooperative prima-donnas and taking their toys home with them.
