The current political wrangling in F1 is a bore. Yes, in theory it is important if that is your thing, if you stand to gain or lose millions of dollars, or if someone is going to take away your train set and leave you nothing to play with, but few F1 fans care about this. Few understand it. All they see is a sport that is in a mess. And that sort of thing drives them away. Ditto the sponsors. They don’t want all this bull. They want racing and people eyeballing their logos and feeling good about the products. They want no political agendas and no interference.
Half the current problem is that everyone is playing the game of brinksmanship and it is really down to who has the least (or the most) to lose. Ferrari could quit the sport for a bit. Would it hurt them? Of course it would. They would still have years of racing heritage off which to trade but they would be giving up a lot with what would be little more than a gesture. They would have trouble keeping up with the development in F1. They would lose engineers and drivers. They would lose sponsors. These are all short term things but they would be setbacks nonetheless.
Renault does not have the same heritage as Ferrari and thus its departure would be no great loss for the sport. The team would, no doubt, end up in the hands of Flavio Briatore and he would find money to run it. Money has never been his problem. It would also get Renault out of the embarrassing position of another year when it is not a serious contender. It would mean engine changes or withdrawal for Red Bull Racing – which is doing a better job than the factory team – but that is not a major worry for a chief executive used to shutting down businesses and laying off workers.
The same is true of Toyota. The company has not won a race in eight years of F1 and while it may still be good for the firm to appear a little bit sporty, it is not the end if the world if the plug were to be pulled. The loss of these teams is reall only important in terms of the number of cars on the grid. If there are not enough of them, there is less for F1 to sell and this less money can be made.
The loss of any teams is bad for Formula 1. The grid could have 26 cars but that has not been the case for many years. This is because only the top 10 are paid. That is supposed to change in the brave new world being discussed at the moment, but it is not clear how that can happen as some teams would probably take legal action if the take was divided by 13 rather than by 10. In their position you would argue the same thing.
What is clearly needed in this respect is a single fair commercial agreement that everyone understands and everyone is happy to accept. That is not possible as the underlying problem is that most if the teams think they are being ripped off, having to give away 50% of the income for no apparent gain.
Whatever the case, losing teams is not good for F1.
The thorniest of all the issues is that of governance. Max Mosley has his own style of doing business and that seems to be to decide what he wants and then get it by whatever means he can. This is all very clever, but it annoys those who have millions invested in the business. The bottom line is that Mosley has no money on the table so has nothing to lose except his job (which he does not really need) and his power (which some people think he does need). He can thus go closer to the brink than anyone else and will be safe unless one of his own pushes him over the edge or everyone agrees to pick him up and throw him out.
No-one has any gripe with the FIA as an institution, apart from the fact that like most sporting associations it tends to dance to the tune of the strongest man. Mosley is a giant among what appears to be a field of pygmies. Most seem to be time-servers who want only to protect their own positions. There may be some bright sparks in there somewhere, but they are hiding until the moment is right to leap out and become superheroes (if that moment ever comes).
The teams want a degree of self determination, but most would be satisfied if someone listened to them a little more.
Mosley used to listen a lot more. But he got bored with that a long time ago. Some of the teams tend to go on and on and on and nothing is ever achieved. So he has taken to doing things his way and says that he is doing what he is doing for the good of the sport and that the teams are not the right people to run things. This is true up to a point. Mosley could approach the problem in a different way and look at ways of keeping more money in the sport by renegotiating the commercial contract with his old pal Bernie Ecclestone. He is less easy to push around than the teams.
Mosley’s weakness in the current fight is that he bangs on about the need to do things because of “the new teams”. From where we are sitting that is not a phrase one can use in the plural. There are a lot of people talking a good game, but when push comes to shove, how many will deliver? The USF1 operation is the only one that smells even vaguely sensible. There may be others who might stumble on a lunatic billionaire, but these are hard people to find…
Using “the new teams” to justify anything is thus tenuous at best and it is alarming that Mosley would be willing, if absolutely necessary, to trade Ferrari for a gaggle of half-arsed operations with no visible means of support. Therein lies the weakness of his arguments.
Everyone agrees that costs must be capped or cut. Mosley wants it his way and seems unwilling to compromise because of these nebulous new teams. One could argue that it would be better to let the teams find proper solutions within a sensible timeframe rather than trying to force them to accept something that will not make them happy.
Mosley’s way of doing business and his motivation are thus open to question. One can argue that the teams are trying to take power but it is hard to see why they would bother if they had a structure with which they were happy.
As with most unrest in this world, things can be solved easily enough if one addresses the real problems and finds a suitable solution. If people are happy, they do not rebel.
pleasure toread your insights J #:) a great read!! #:)
I still don’t understand how on earth the FIA thinks it can justify controlling the financial operation of several large private commercial entities?
Surely the governance of the FIA can only extend to the sporting regulations. This season clearly shows that a change to the formula can change the hierarchy, even if the change proves to be only temporary.
Putting aside the obvious problem (i.e. that such financial monitoring is impossible); all the teams are profit (or loss) making businesses and are entitled to do with their money what they wish. Some are more successful than others and can thus afford to spend more. So be it.
This so called credit crunch is financial regulation enough. Those that can, will. Those that can’t, will not.
Placing all the teams on a level playing field is arguably a laudable objective but it can’t be done this way and in my opinion, for F1 it should not be done at all. The pinnacle should be the pinnacle.
Imagine the FA cutting the budgets of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal & Chelsea so that teams like Hull and West Brom could better afford compete against them.
Ludicrous!
Success is hard earned and deserved. Artificial levelling of teams we can do without.
Agreed – an excellent summation of the whole sorry mess.
Joe, it’s very interesting but though you’re an F1 insider you may not be fully aware of all the fan communities on the internet and how many people from these communities actually attend F1 races to cheer (just think of that) for Glock or even hopeless Piquet. They also happen to buy tickets. With possible disappearance of RBR, RF1 or Toyota F1 brands a large number of people will be discouraged from following F1.
For Renault pulling out won’t be such a loss in terms of marketing: they came, they saw, they won. Toyota would be better off supplying engines to Williams just to keep its name in F1. Besides, with electric vehicles coming to car dealerships across Europe in 2 years’ time Formula 1 even with KERS and internal combustion engine won’t stand for road technology (diesel Le Mans thing won’t last long either so it’s not an alternative to petrol, hell, without producing petrol you can’t produce diesel fuel, unless it’s some smelly bio-diesel). There will be nothing to take or gain from developing F1 cars and try to transfer the technology to road vehicles, for car firms racing will become irrelevant. And you can’t race electric F1 cars, there’ll be no noise, it will just suck so sooner or later Renault and Toyota will pull the plug and we’ll go back to Arrows, Minardi, Tyrrell, DNF-Racing, Daffodil, Fartec and Schizotec or whateverTEC days. Personally, I’m waiting for electric cars to arrive on the market, no way I’m buying something outdated like any model of the current car range from any manufacturer involved in F1.
I think losing any team is bad, no matter whether it’s so-called legend or relatively new team. Maybe they can come up with smooth transition plan so that we can enjoy racing with Vomitec-Toyota and resurrected Tyrrell, have multiple pile-ups and just let F1 be “the city of the plague”, I suppose you could attach some loudspeakers to electric F1 cars of the future and play V10 engine noise, that would be exciting. Obviously, I wrote all this half-jokingly. Hope you can appreciate the humour.
[...] Questions – Joe Saward’s Grand Prix Blog "Mosley’s weakness in the current fight is that he bangs on about the need to do things because of “the new teams”. From where we are sitting that is not a phrase one can use in the plural. There are a lot of people talking a good game, but when push comes to shove, how many will deliver? The USF1 operation is the only one that smells even vaguely sensible. There may be others who might stumble on a lunatic billionaire, but these are hard people to find… [...]
Mr. Saward-
I think your analysis is brilliant! (Because you’re the first one to say what I believe.)
After ignoring F1 since just before the Eccleston epoch began, I returned to fandom last year and have enjoyed sorting out who’s who and what’s what. Apparently we all live on Bernie’s planet. By and large I’m OK with that.
But this Mosley guy is hideous. I think he functions solely as an aly-oop partner for Bernie (USA basketball term; his job is to be in a very specific place at a very specific time for momentary participation in the process of scoring points.)
In the BBC walk-by interview yesterday, Bernie looked calm and collected. He’s thrown the ball, and now it’s the task of his FIA flunky to drop it into the basket. When a Frank Williams or a Vijay Mallya starts complaining about rules that favor teams who’ve made nowhere near as much sacrifice as they have, Bernie will be able to pretend that it’s the FIA’s fault… As if the FIA was there to do anything but show up on race day wearing a silly blazer and give this a sheen of solemnity.
Most hideous of all, the thing that truly makes me think less of the sport, is Mosley’s abject mockery of Howlett and Domenicali… These are men who’ve given their careers (and spent millions of dollars for demanding bosses) to bring us sensational entertainment… All while the weasel Mosley was having his pink parts slapped around by naughty schoolmarms (or what have you).
Again, I’m sure the Mosley’s doing all this as Bernie’s proxy, and maybe it’s what needs to be done to fatten the dwindling grid. But unpleasantness of this magnitude from technocrats, even in the pleasantly theatrical arena of league sport, is not to be tolerated.
Ferrari has really turned into an embarrasing rabble since Jean Todt and Ross Brawn left. Now they send the team principal to a really important meeting about the future of the sport and don’t even tell him they are starting legal action before/or during the meeting. This is arrogance and stupidity probably not seen from a multi million dollar company.
Do they think they are anything without someone else to race? They are not F1. They are one popular team.
Let them race sports cars.
The world does not work like Italy where you can buy anything at all. You may be able to buy the Italian soccer title in Italy , but the world F1 championship must be won.
Enzo Ferrari will be turning in his grave. He just wanted to race. He was a racer. “bring them on , I will race them with small budget – no problem!” He would probably be saying.
Paul Stoddart for FIA president
:p
“Paul Stoddart for FIA president”
… well, wouldn’t that just put the cat amongst the pigeons!!
Seconded!
Craig,
Enzo Ferrari made a regular event of threatening to pull out of F1. he woul be perfectly happy with the current situation. The record books say John Surtees won the 1964 championship in a Ferrari. In fact Ferrari pulld out of the championship and he raced a NART in the las two races. It was blue and white and remarkably like a Ferrari.
Brinkmanship is in the Ferrari DNA.
“The thorniest of all the issues is that of governance.”
Not to disagree (as I hardly can) but I would change “thorniest” to “thornier” and add “money” as the next down the list.
I note that over in the Giro d’Italia — which despite a stunning lack of loud engine noises seems to have a rabid following of its own — the riders have staged a slow-down of sorts in the most recent stage, over “safety”.
One of the cycle teams just staged another protest yesterday (or thereabouts — I am in the States and thus out of synch). This was over money. Non-payment of salaries to be exact. There may be no connection to the slow-down, but then again, if you’re already pissed off about one thing then exactly how difficult is it to get strung out about another?
Being in the States I can appreciate the cultural currency, as it were, of money. Here it is everything.
Stage a concert of Mozart’s “Missa Solemnis” and the first question is “How much will it cost?” The “value” or “quality” of anything is in its price tag. Americans have little basis for thinking any other way.
In Europe, of course, it is different, at least until fairly recently.
Or that is the illusion. Go back not so many hundred years and you will discover just how much the quantity of one’s florins or pounds determined one’s status and one’s tastes.
Only now it is status and taste on the American plan, as determined by this or that corporate “sponsor” hot to flash its fanny on the skin of this race car or of that bike rider’s tights.
But those fannies (or components thereof) are increasingly screwed up tight at the moment, and this is what “governance” in Euro sport (as elsewhere) is butting up against.
Throw in the tensions inherent in extreme competition — not the buddies-out-for-a-spin-on-the weekend variety of competition — and any sports governance which bases its authority on an open spigot of fool’s money is completely out of its league.
Stoddy for President? Top man.
Someone should start a petition…
Joe, simply brilliant! Especially I like the “thorny” paragraph describing Max Mosley’s role.
[...] As Joe Saward put it, it beggars belief that Max Mosley would think that it would be worth trading names like Ferrari, Toyota, Renault, BMW and potentially Mercedes for names like Wirth Research, Epsilon Euskadi, RML, Formtech, Campos and so on. Ask Max Mosley’s precious “man in the pub” about any of the names from the first list, and their eyes will light up in recognition. Asking about names from the second list would elicit a nonplussed response. [...]