I would actually like to see him, and the FIA, actually do something about the mess they've got other series into, since they have only paid attention to F1.Quote:
Originally Posted by AJP
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I would actually like to see him, and the FIA, actually do something about the mess they've got other series into, since they have only paid attention to F1.Quote:
Originally Posted by AJP
I would agree, however as F1 is the 'Blue Riband' I can accept that it will get more attention, and certainly I can live with that. What I can't accept is the almost disregard for the other series - WTCC & WRC who are both struggling for Manufacturers and a proper media package.Quote:
Originally Posted by theugsquirrel
Andy! How can you say that? They banned active front and rear diffs in the WRC, didn't they? That seems to have solved all those pesky problems the WRC has been facing for years now :mark:
Oh silly me!! I forgot about that - forgive me - it slipped my mind.
Now get back to the WRC forum so we can talk about how enthralling the last event in our extremely healthy championship was! :mark:
At least F1 has some spectacle left. The WRC is dying on it's feet. WRC fans would have loved for Max just to acknowledge that the WRC exists in his interview let alone talk about measures to save it!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Couldn't agree more! He's entitled to a private life just as much as the next person. Just because his activities don't fit into what is regarded as acceptable in society people seem to think its ok for people to call for him to resign. Its discrimination.
What Max fails to appreciate is that cost-cutting every few years actually costs more money.
Goodness knows what the manufacturers spent in R&D for the long-life engines and gearboxes but I'm willing to bet it was more than the cost of manufacturing a few extra units. The money spent on KERS would make your eyes water, and you can guarantee that all the teams have had their wind-tunnels running 24/7 trying to adapt to the 2009 aero changes.
If only Max would stop buggering about at the margins, the smaller teams could play catch-up. In fact this has already hapenned to an extent. Look how close the field is in qualifying: barely a couple of seconds between pole and 20th.
Constantly re-writing the rulebook means that the teams with most resource will always prosper.
I can understand why people say it though. He's not done the best of jobs on the motorsport side of things though. But you have to wonder how much of that may be down to manufacturers and other external factors like Bernie.
I agree Dave. If you look at the WRC in the 90's there were relatively few changes in regs. They introduced WRCars and changed the size of the inlet restrictors once or twice and it prospered. But then it got stagnant, expensive and and boring to watch.
Any changes need to be carefully considered and their long term implications thought about at length. The whole two race engine thing has done little if anything for costs, but there are other measures that can be taken which can actually have a more positive effect on the sport.
If nothing is done or if the rules get tinkered with every year or so it will only hurt the championship.
Absolutely :up: and that is exactly what has been happening among the teams. It's the reason FOTA was created. Changes are being considered and discussed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
Well on the track record of what's happened in the last few years the changes haven't been properly thought out ;)
The problem is, Max's bleating about cost-cutting is starting to become a bit like Bono or Bob Geldof bitching about world hunger and poverty. Noble causes sure, but you get the feeling they are using it for their own attention-seeking needs.
If Max was serious about cost cutting and increasing the grid, perhaps scrapping the $48 million new team entry bond would be a good start? How about allowing single car teams again?
But F1, like any sport, will always have the haves and have nots, as said above. Also teams will spend what they have available to them - always have always will - and teams with more to spend will inevitably come out on top - but not always (Toyota?)
The key is to make it more accessible at entry level, for teams to enter, and yes probably come last week in week out, but then somebody has to be last!
The fact is I don't think anyone running the sport is serious about helping the smaller teams. They'd actually prefer to have a nice, compact, homogenized, manageable 20 car grid all within 2 seconds of each other, rather than an entry list of 30-40 cars with some heroic minnows maybe 6 or 7 seconds off the pace.
No - this is just an excuse for Max to push his one-make, standardized component, engine-freezing, dumbing-down agenda on us. Strange for the man who was once one-quarter of one of the world's biggest customer racing car manufacturers that he is so hell-bent on killing off that cottage industry and have 3 or 4 companies producing ALL of the world's racing cars - because that is the way it is heading.
One driver once said, I think it was Martin Brundle, that when Mosley first won the FISA presidential election he introduced himself to the drivers at Suzuka in 1991, and said something along the lines of "you won't be seeing much of me", which was greeted with a cheer (after all the rubbish with Balestre over the previous 10 or so years).
Well, a great big fat lie that turned out to be.
P.S. As for the WRC's problems, well as an ex-fan of rallying I can only speak for myself, but the day they decided to can events like the Safari and RAC rallies for a few laps of a car park in Wales somewhere, was pretty much the beginning of the end for that once-great sport. Top that off with entry caps and a control tyre (sound familiar?) and right now I couldn't care less about the WRC.
I'm amazed of the posts of some of you.
If the costs of running a F1 team will not be cut at least by half than F1 will not survive. It's that simple.
Don't you people see that the financial markets fall back to a low mark that we didn't see since the 80's?
Who the hell are you expecting to continue investing half a billion USD a year in a F1 team?
You might want to say that there are contracts in place already. Contracts are worth only the paper they are written on if one of the parts goes bankrupt.
You lot may continue to attack Max left and right for his cost cutting ideas, but I'd like to see what will you do when there will be no more F1. I bet you will b!tch about how max didn't cut costs when it was still possible.
This is going to sound stupid, but 'cost cutting' can mean anything - so what do the Teams do to cut costs, and what do the FIA mean by cost cutting? They might not be the same.Quote:
Originally Posted by V12
As for your WRC point - basically the changes were to 'cut costs' and for better media coverage. So you can see it's worked.
What are you basing that on ioan?Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
How did F1 survive the 80's?Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
Take Toyota as an example. They have precious little to show for their massive investment in F1 over the years and yet they remain in the sport. Why?Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
Also, is there any sign that any of the manufacturer teams are considering withdrawing from F1? The fact is they will come and go regardless according to their own needs, not the needs of F1. They always have done.
Max has been talking about cost cutting in F1 for years, and yet what has he done about it? He has introduced a variety of rule changes that have cost the teams money, as well as increasing entry & superlicence fees but what has he done to reduce costs?Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
I agree but that still doesn't mean that an actual cutting of costs isn't needed to give the sport a shot in the foot before it goes the way of the WRC and drifts off into relative obscurity as the WRC seems to be doing.....Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
Whether or not Max walks the walk and actually implements rules which mean costs actually get cut who knows but he is right in what he is saying.
Well that kind of proves my point then. In dumbing down and changing the whole concept of the sport in the name of "cost cutting", it p*sses off the purists and real genuine fans of the sport (who, contrary to popular belief, aren't completely worthless and not worth caring about). So you get a "cheaper" sport that nobody is watching or cares about - sponsors leave, manufacturers leave, and the whole thing goes tits-up anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyRAC
There was a time in F1, like the Indy 500, when an individual could actually build a car in his garage and if he could get it to the track, pay the entry fee, and quailify for the grid, he was in the race. With the exception of Ferrari when Enzo was still alive, I've always thought that having manufacturers make up the majority of the grid was a mistake because their shareholders are their main priority, as well they should be. Nowadays, just the cost of buying into F1 is staggering and the expenses of all those fly-away races can't be cheap either. I wonder how much money is spent on carbon fiber over a season? Maybe we should go back to aluminum and fiberglass on chassis construction but continue with electronic and engine developments elsewhere on the cars. I can see manufacturers having an interest in electronics and engines for possible production car uses but I don't think we'll be seeing any mass producing auto manufacturers building their road cars with carbon fiber anytime soon, with the exception of Ferrari.
Not always.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Brockman
How do you explain Renault's performance after drastic rule changes in '03 and '05. Or how about Ferrari's demise in '05?
The flipside of the coin is that reg changes equalises the competition because its a clean sheet of paper for everyone.
But yes, constant rule changes doesn't do much good with cost cutting agenda.
That's a deposit. It's to ensure that teams have sufficient funds to enter the championship but you only have to look at the demise of Super Aguri to look at the financial mess F1 is in. Seems like Torro Rosso is next on the Grim Reaper's list.Quote:
Originally Posted by V12
Ok then, almost always. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by wedge
The big teams have the budget and infrastructure to throw massive resources at any new challenge, probably spending far more in the process rather than see the intended saving.
Yes there's the chance that a team lower down the grid will happen on a solution which propels them up the order, but that's the exception rather than the rule.
John Howlett of Toyota:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/71281http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/71277Quote:
"I think that the teams have a lot of ideas to actually save money but at the same time not destroy the core DNA or value of Formula One. I think that given a constructive discussion and hopefully shall we say using the current environment of ‘financial crisis', people could take a political advantage and try to apply unnecessary pressure and hopefully for once we can put politics behind these discussions and really focus on the facts, the real issues and then we will find, I am sure, good solutions."
:up:
There is no doubt that manufacturer teams can survive the crisis if the respective manufacturers' boards agree with spending on a motorsport division.
But what about the other teams? :rolleyes:
He's STILL at it!!
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/71405
Seriously, I think i'm one of the few people who couldn't give a flying... about his sex life or who his dad was or anything, all I care about is the fact he's so out of touch and incompetent that he could end up causing irreversible damage to the sport unless he is removed from office NOW. :mad:
Standard engines? Shorter races? Less work on cars?
We've already got A1GP for that, Max.
There has been a vacant grid spot for a few years now (2 since Super Aguri disappeared). Whatever issues are preventing more teams entering F1 have existed for some time, not just as a sudden side-effect of the recent economic downturn.
Teams have always cut their coat according to their cloth, and will continue to do so.
Constantly tinkering with the regulations every year of two doesn't exactly help cut costs, does it Max? :rolleyes:
Just go.
You can bet that even if all this cost cutting is implemented, we'll still only have 10-12 teams that can afford/are allowed to compete, which kind of defeats the whole point anyway.
If these changes are pushed through, F1 will lose much of its unique selling point, p--- off the genuine fans who contrary to Max's out of touch views DO care and WILL know the difference when parts are standardised or whatever, and I doubt there'll be many lemmings to take their place as fans who aren't there already.
Max needs to stop treating the teams like franchises or departments of one business entity and realise that they are competitive entities, all in competition (not collaboration) with each other, basically we need a racer in charge. I'm all for bigger grids but I'd rather watch proper F1 with 18-20 cars than some artifical almost-spec snoozefest that's artificially limited to 24 cars anyway.
Autosport have now published Max's letter to FOTA - link
Funny that an invitation to tender for engines is option 1 of 3. Don't give the other two much hope of happening!!
I just don't get the opposition to a standard engine. I'm very much against a complete spec series like a1gp but the standardisation of one component which will save millions for all the teams is a good thing. Sure Ferrari and the other top teams will chuck that money into chassis development and it will show but at least this frees up some money for the minnows to put some money into testing and chassis development also. The top teams will still be the top teams but we'll see the drivers becoming more of a factor and we'll see more events like Monza and this can only be a good thing. Right now the teams could all be running the same engines and we wouldn't know it and it wouldn't matter. As long as the cars still look different, still make the right noises and are visually very fast then F1 is still F1.
Gone are the days where the silly levels of expenditure can be maintained for very little reward. With the current economic climate Honda and Toyota won't be able to keep up spending all this money just to end up with very little to show for it cv the end of the year.
It's funny how the most important thing for them is the SHOW and how to improve it, no mention about technical excellence.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
It's maybe time for the reds to leave the boat, or at least threaten to do it if such proposals are pushed through.
Maybe Ferrari should go back to Le Mans prototype racing?! One can dream.
That would be great ioan. I LOVE prototype racing. I'm not fussed about where the teams are as long as there's a good show.
it's funny to see that being against Max is the only time when all(allmost) Formula 1 fans(regardless of their personal tastes) have a common opinion
By "them" do you mean the teams or the FIA?Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
Stefano Domenicali said that FOTA have:
The purpose of me linking to Mosley's letter was to highlight the way he goes about things. He's asked the teams to come up with proposals. The teams have organised themselves under FOTA and have done just that according to what Domenicali says. And yet, just before the scheduled meeting with the teams to discuss the way forward Max announces a tender for a spec engine. Why do that when such an option is just one of three options he himself has put on the table for discussion?Quote:
"...agreed on a document that I think is very important, because it goes in the direction the FIA has rightly pressed on with regards to costs, while keeping what we feel are the right variables in F1. And also keeping in mind both the interests of the independent, smaller teams, who need to make significant savings in the short term, but also keeping in mind the interests of the constructors with research and technology."
Whatever the answer to that it seems that his stance has raised questions among the teams:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/71558Quote:
...it has emerged that all team principals are unlikely to attend the Mosley meeting - amid fears of divide-and-conquer tactics being used to weaken the teams' position.
Senior sources have suggested there is a fear within FOTA that Mosley is using the threat of a standard engine, plus recent suggestions of engine equalization rules and the return of customer cars, as a way to break what has appeared to be rare unity in team ranks following the formation of FOTA.
That says plenty about Max, doesnt it. Quite frankly he's a bafoon that thinks a spec series is a good thing. He's right in that F1 needs to cut costs now, nut then he's been banging on about this for years and done nothing of any real value. I'd have more faith in Briatore doing the job right, he's been going on about it for just as long but tends to get ignored a lot more.Quote:
Originally Posted by harsha
Personnally, I think F1 needs a complete re-write of the rules book, down to the base concept of the cars if need be. The problem with most rule changes that get implemented at the moment is that they are increasingly complex and are based on a car concept that has been purposelly allowed to become a very complex, and subsequently expensive beast, that has had to be rained in by ever increasing layers of regulation (quite a bit of it being a bi vague as well) forcing the teams to spend more money to find solutions to problems. Take the front wing hight that was raised by 50mm in both 2001 and 2003(?). The idea was that it would reduce the downforce and make for better racing, but each time it made for increasingly complex wing designs to claw back the lost performance and made them more sensitive, going completely against the point of the rule changes in the first place.
F1 needs a more simple rule book that clearly states what is and isnt allowed and makes clear avenues of development, but not in a way that cost millions of £/$.
I would love to see it! Prototype racing is fast becoming my favorite form of racing. It's fan friendly, technology friendly, and a great spectacle to watch - everything that F1 is not (or is rapidly losing.)Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
Ferrari have already been giving serious support to the GT2 teams running F430's in the ALMS. It would be nice to see them take it up a level. I would love to see the next 333SP or 312PB successor! :)
I meant Max and Bernie, now that they seem to be "friends" again, who are both pushing ahead this one engine proposals and other means to cut costs and improve the SHOW.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
Slightly off-topic but probably not worthy of its own thread, here's a very candid and revealing interview with Max from yesterday's Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008...mosley-privacy
:)
Put bluntly, Bernie is interested in making money for those he represents. It's what he's done since the early days of FOCA, when the teams were the main beneficiaries, to today when the banks that own the Formula One brand are looking for a return on their investment. His efforts have made a lot of money for a lot of people, not just himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by ioan
So yes, Bernie wants to improve the show because a better show means more interest and so more commercial income.
Max, himself a noteable Bernie beneficiary, has (or should have) a different role. The FIA is the sport's policeman. It's there to frame the rules and police them, not just for F1 but for most motorsport worldwide. But Max sees his role in much wider terms where F1 is concerned. His argument appears to be that to remain credible F1 has to become a test-bed for road cars, regardless of the views of the manufacturers currently in F1.
I don't think the manufacturers see F1 in those terms. For them F1 is primarily a marketing tool used to enhance their brand. There may be other advantages for them, but road car develpment is not a priority in the same sense.
I'd like to know why Max is not targetting touring car racing, for example. Surely those series are the ideal stage for the manufacturers to race their road cars, and develop road-revelevant technology in a way that everyone could understand?
F1 is a 'prototype' series in a way that touring cars are not, but Max seems intent on changing that, and in doing so is fundamentally moving away from what F1 has been. To me, Max is acting beyond the remit of the FIA, and dictating to those who chose to participate in F1 why they should be in F1. That's for the likes of Honda, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, Ferrari and Renault to decide, not Max or the FIA. By his actions it seems entirely possible that those manufacturers may consider leaving the sport. What would we be left with then?
I can see his point, though I view it rather differently - that F1 should embrace the development of new technologies, which is something a bit removed from being a 'test-bed for road cars'. Whatever the practicalities of this, I don't see anything wrong with the FIA looking at ways to keep F1 relevant, which it may not be, given time, if it is perceived negatively for environmental reasons and continues to be a display of conspicuous wealth in hard financial times.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
Among the main reasons behind developing the Super 2000 touring car formula were that it should remain uncomplicated and cheap, and not become a costly undertaking involving ever-higher technology like Super Touring was. Rising costs killed off that formula, and I think allowing S2000 to be turned into a technological exercise would do something similar.Quote:
Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1
I don't see the fascination with high tech. Current Word Rally Cars and F1 cars are some of the most sophisticated machines about but they're as dull as dishwater to watch when you compare them to their predecessors 15 years ago or so. High tech doesn't mean better to watch. You could tell most people that the gearbox of an F1 is a really just two toffee apples stuck together and as long as the cars are spectacular to watch people will watch it. Something can be the pinnacle of whatever it is and still be ****. Just remember that.
But hasn't it always done that, and in doing so there has been some transfer of race technology to the road? The example I'm thinking of is the turbo, which Renault introduced because the rules didn't prevent them from doing so!! It may have taken BMW to refine the idea into an championship winning engine, but we certainly saw plenty of turbos on our roads, and still do. Then there's the flappy-paddle gearbox which has made its way to some road cars.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDunnell
Those are two examples which are perhaps more using the "image" associated with F1 than the technology, and I'm sure that technology pioneered in F1 has found its way to our roads in many different ways.
You can be sure that major manufacturers would not want to be associated with any negative image and would take appropriate action. I don't think Max, by his proposals, is saving them from anything there.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDunnell
Fair point, but the issue for me was relevance. A touring car is more relevant than F1 to road technology, and in a way that is more marketable in the sense of future customers seeing the car they may buy racing.Quote:
Originally Posted by BDunnell
Then again, given that Max's F2 series is due to support the WTCC perhaps his version of F1 could headline that package :p