There's obviously some money involved. Not so much that the team qualifies as a full-blown wors team, but nor have they been cut off entirely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Koppomsbo
It's not the first time Ford have done this. They tend to spend as little as possible on their motorsport programmes, and try and get as much out of it as they can. A few years ago, they were supporting four V8 Supercar teams: Ford Performance Racing, Triple Eight Race Engineering, Stone Brothers Racing and Dick Johnson Racing. They decided to cut back their factory support so that only FPR and SBR received any money, reasoning that as the oldest team in the country, Dick Johnson Racing would have no difficulty securing sponsors. Likewise, as the reigning champions and the team that had been the class act, Triple Eight would have no trouble getting sponsors. And that was probably the stupidest mistake that they made: DJR lost their star driver to the leading Holden team (who really only bought him for the right to use the #1 on their cars), whilst Triple Eight revolted and removed all Ford branding from their cars before crossing over to Holden the next season, where they get all the resources they want and continue to dominate the series. That's the problem with entrusting your motorsport programme to your accountants: motorsport is very expensive, and if accountants weren't prepated to take a hatchet to a budget, then they wouldn't be accountants. The decision to pull funding from DJR and Triple Eight no doubt made perfect sense on paper: by backing two teams that needed the funding, and letting the other two support themselves (which they were and still are capable of doing), they'd get maximum exposure for minimal success. But nobody thought to ask Triple Eight how they felt about losing support, and nobody could have seen the falling-out between DJR's partners that led to their star driver losing faith in their ability to dliver (and rightfully so; the team has imploded).
I'd say that Ford's presence in the WRC this year is largely symbolic. I've heard that Citroen were spending more on Sebastien Loeb and Mikko Hirvonen than Ford spent on their entire WRC programme last year. If they wanted to compete with Citroen, they would have had to have met them dollar-for-dollar, and even then, there would be no guarantee of success. It would be impossible to maintain that level of expenditure with no certainty of results. With Sebastien Loeb kicking around the idea of retiring - I believe he was originally going to do it at the end of 2011, but decided on one more season - Ford are probably going to be biding their time in 2013, seeing what the running order looks like before either re-committing or maintaining a reduced investment in 2014. It's what I'd do, and I'm not an accountant.
