Mosley wants action to 'save' F1

Thought the most illuminating part of the interview on the BBC news last night with Mr M. was not the financial situation of F1 but the questions about the events in his private life which made all the headlines this year. In response he hardly appeared to suggest that he would be changing his habits, which must be re assuring for his wife, who the interviewer suggested had been oblivious to his tastes for the past 50 years! Mr M brushed it off by stating that it was all down to human nature and that there was little he could do about it.

What made me laugh was that behind Max's right shoulder was a 1/8th scale Ferrari F1 car, guess it was a "gift" from the Scuderia and in no way suggests a pro Ferrari bias?!!!

*sigh* Would it have been better if there had been no model there? Why are people picking up on this meaningless observation when Max said stuff that was a lot more interesting, enlightening and worrying than a model f1 car.

I suppose I'm the only one here who has a bit of sympathy for Max.

Manufacturers will come and go but Max needs to keep them sweet one way or the other. People love to see manufacturer involvement. Look at Le Mans. There's been more interest when someone else is fighting against the Audis.

Costs needs to brought down/be more managable. Look what happened in Touring Cars. DTM/ITC destroyed itself because of huge costs. FIA came up with Super 2000 rules to keep costs down from Super Touring. I can't be the only who thought it was ridiculous idea at the time but almost a decade later its done a lot of good.

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Originally Posted by ioan

I have a feeling that with the current financial troubles there might be a very natural spending cap on F1 teams. If there will be F1 at all in a couple of years.

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Things could be worse than we think. If you've checked the Nikei or the Hang Seng as well as the Dow and FTSE today, financial support for some of the F1 teams could disappear before the end of this month.

Actually, it may dry up even sooner. :(

I think you're quite right wedge, but salary/budget caps will never work properly. S2000 is a great example of cost cutting that has worked in touring cars. There's less show but it's so cheap compared to how it used to be that some manufacturers can afford to run teams of more than 2 cars which is a good thing. Though a grid full of Leons gets a bit annoying. I fully agree cutting costs is the way forward but caps aren't a good way of doing that.

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Originally Posted by Dave Brockman

It means an admission that the freeze on development as a cost-saving measure has failed massively.

Instead of investing year-by-year in engine development, manufacturers will now pour huge sums into one massive push next year.

Result: no money saved, and a likely advantage for the large teams who can allocate huge resources quickly.

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There will be money saved, because next year the manufacturers won't have as much money to pour into F1! :D
That is if some teams don't go bankrupt until that moment. I really fear that Williams will be in a dire situation give the RBS and Hamley's situation.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

I think you're quite right wedge, but salary/budget caps will never work properly. S2000 is a great example of cost cutting that has worked in touring cars. There's less show but it's so cheap compared to how it used to be that some manufacturers can afford to run teams of more than 2 cars which is a good thing. Though a grid full of Leons gets a bit annoying. I fully agree cutting costs is the way forward but caps aren't a good way of doing that.

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I don't agree with budget caps either. There should be ways and means of slowing the rate of development eg. long life components, engine development freeze.

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Originally Posted by Valve Bounce

Things could be worse than we think. If you've checked the Nikei or the Hang Seng as well as the Dow and FTSE today, financial support for some of the F1 teams could disappear before the end of this month.

Actually, it may dry up even sooner. :(

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Things are going so fast that in 1 week Iceland went from the hero to zero and are in a position to catch up with Zimbabwe's inflation (it won't happen because they have a solid economy based on fishing, but a financial debt of 6 times your GDP isn't exactly a rosy situation).

Still today at noon (CET) most central bans decided to cut their reference interest, and this meant all markets trends were reversed.

However this doesn't mean that a few banks wont be nationalized and that means no more money for sponsoring anything, especially given that Icelandic banks were way to present on many markets, with the UK being the main one.

Ioan. You should go to the chit chat section if you enjoy talking about the credit crunch. Not saying don't discuss it here or anything, just that you can have a more in depth discussion there :up:

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Originally Posted by Daniel

*sigh* Would it have been better if there had been no model there? Why are people picking up on this meaningless observation when Max said stuff that was a lot more interesting, enlightening and worrying than a model f1 car.

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Apologies that I don't inhabit the same high intellectual plane as you. It appealed to my sense of humour thats why I mentioned it.

I trust you mean interesting about his sexual preferences and not FI as he hardly came up with anything earth shattering about the World economic situation that may or may not affect the F1 circus. Anyway I'm sure Bernie would be able to prop it up in much the same way as the world's governments are propping up thier respective banking industries.