The upcoming F1 Strategy Group – illegal though perhaps it may one day be ruled – is currently the decision-making body of Formula 1. It consists of six teams and representatives from the FIA and from the Formula One group. Despite a rather poor attempt by some of the team principals to argue that this is a forum for discussion, it makes the key decisions. These are then sent on to the Formula 1 Commission which only has the right to accept or reject those decisions. Of course, if you want to know the membership of the Formula 1 Commission, there is no point in asking the FIA. The only rule that I can find says that “the Commission shall be constituted in
accordance with the Concorde Agreement (or any similar document which may replace it)”, which means that it is confidential. Nothing like a sport with transparent rules…
Traditionally, the F1 Commission has consisted on a member from the FOM, one from the FIA, a member from each competing team, six race promoters (three from Europe and three outside Europe) appointed by FOM, two circuit representatives (one from Europe and one from outside) appointed by the teams, plus representatives from Pirelli, the engine manufacturers and two sponsors (from different market sectors). This means that it has a membership of around 24 people (depending on the number of teams). However, it is not one vote per representative, as there are always 12 team votes – even if there are only nine teams. If the teams vote 5-4, the majority is able to add the additional three votes and so eight votes count one way and only four the other way. In other words if the top five teams stick together the smaller teams have virtually no voice at all. It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that the Formula One Group has a pretty dominant position in this set up as no race promoter wants to upset the people who decide who gets a race. The FIA has almost no power in this body.
The next step of the process is that a proposal then goes to the FIA World Motor Sport Council and is either accepted or rejected. One can see that this gives the FIA power to block things. The World Council tends to do what the FIA President wants because the members do not wish to lose the privileges that come with the position and it is very clear that Jean Todt does not like criticism, let alone opposition.
So if the Formula 1 Strategy Group meets and votes on Ecclestone’s idea of bringing back old engines, what will happen? Mercedes will, logically, oppose it. And if you are a Mercedes customer it would be best to vote with them. Thus Mercedes should have three team votes (its own, Williams and either Lotus or Force India, depending on who is included). The Formula One group has six votes and the FIA has six votes so if Jean Todt agreed to cancel the FIA’s new engine regulations then the teams and manufacturers would have to follow suit. Ferrari and Red Bull might follow Ecclestone because they are losing, but McLaren is in a new relationship with Honda and voting to cancel the new engines makes no sense at all. Thus the vote could be eight in favour and 10 against. The proposal would get no further. Any other outcome would likely result in at least one manufacturer walking away from the sport and the ensuing chaos that would come from that.
The view of the commercial people is that a dominant Mercedes is not good for the sport (although we didn’t hear a peep when Ferrari won in a string of titles in a row a few years back). The people who believe in sport say that if Mercedes has done a better job than the others, its rivals do not deserve a leg-up for their lack of similar competence.
The option exists for Mercedes to agree to supply its hybrid systems as standard to all the teams, in much the same way as McLaren now provides the electronic control units. However, the FIA is unlikely to be keen on that idea and could (if the testicular mass exists) block it at World Council level, if the others tried to force it through. If the federation were to back down on this, its relevance in the sport would be virtually gone as its clever engine regulations would have been thrown out and replaced by a right old botch-job.
If the FIA had not sold its right to make unilateral decisions – a disgraceful move in my opinion – then the federation could simply dictate that engine manufacturers be only allowed to supply engines at a fixed cost and thus the small teams would be able to survive. The sport would still be seen as cutting edge and everyone would be better off.
joeblogsf1 
Where on earth does the EU commission start?
I really don’t see how they can revert to the old rules. It doesn’t make any sense now.
Your point about everyone using Mercedes hybrid systems seems like a real game spoiler for McLaren-Honda as Honda are only doing the engine, it’s McLaren who are doing the hybrid bit.
Any comment on that Mr S?
F1 needs a shot of socialism in the arm. Capitalism is killing it. 2014 has barely ended and the 2015 winner will drive a Merc. Utter ultra-boring nonsense. It costs an arm and a leg to enter the sport, failure is common, rich teams win, small teams barely score, TV packages are expensive and let’s not mention race ticket prices. The upcoming millenium generation has seen the hardest loss in wealth, status and prognosis in a century. It’s the share economy generation. If F1 thinks these soon-to-be family folks will have disposable income to throw at predictable and expensive racing events, F1 has another thing coming.
Get your act together, F1. All this politicking and capitalism is killing you!
There are plenty of businesses that understand their customers.
If F1 doesn’t it will end up going out of business or being taken over,
No idea where your ‘socialism’ fits in.
I think the reason we can’t understand what they are playing at is we keep thinking we are the customers!
Sorry, Ian. Socialism is colloquialism and code word on this side of the pond for spreading the wealth. Rich teams winning because they’re rich, small teams failing because they’re small, the rich getting richer, the poor getting the shaft, etc, is what will make capitalism and F1 eat themselves alive. It’s unsustainable. F1 needs a new business model as of yesterday.
Ahh and there you have it a nice neat simple fix – “then the federation could simply dictate that engine manufacturers be only allowed to supply engines at a fixed cost and thus the small teams would be able to survive.”
That’s all you need simple pragmatic solution….. but the participants are too dumb and self centered to propose and accept it.
Bernie will want old V10’s rather than V8’s because he is a stuck in the mud with old timers disease. Horner will want V8’s because he won with that, McLaren will want the small teams to be charged an arm and a leg so they cant afford the Honda engines and thus keep the sole supply and Ferrari will want to go back to V12’s because they sound the best in road cars.
I now understand why you don’t go for Bernie’s job, you are simply too smart! You are over qualified, because you wouldn’t make everything massively complicated and clear as dirt.
Merry Christmas Joe. Great piece of writing….
See my comment above wrt McLaren-Honda. It would seem to me that anyone who wants to use the Honda engine will either have to build their own recovery system or buy (if it’s for sale) the McLaren one.
Adam’s comment reminds me the central message of Joe’s column, one which is not to be forgotten. For we should be truly affronted and shocked by the bare truth of how the FIA has abdicated control over our sport. These frightening warnings cum explanations need to keep coming, until we all get the message. Here’s my take:
With talk of socialism versus capitalism, above, it is only sickening to think what we have is stymied capitalism that in turn prevents social aims.
Permit non championship eligible cars to race, with their V8s and 10 and flat twelves, NA or not NA.
Adjust distribution of, e.g. trackside advertising.
What do we come for, but the unique chance to see unparalleled machinery race wheel to wheel with the greatest skill?
What do teams race for, but to show their engineering prowess, and to parade their sponsors, their supporters and paymasters?
In all the debate, we forget how simple a pursuit is our highest desire and regard!
Just as Marx accepted capitalism to be required to provide the growth necessary to support his political and human ideals, let us not disregard that one may have a purpose which may be enacted in apparently contrary ways. (Good study can be enjoyed in Stalin’s ready if reluctant permissiveness of capitalism, when his five year plans, under the New Economic Program, were at risk. Even ad hoc futures and options exchanges sprang up, and made the difference between factories who could, and those which withered.)
If MB want to supply the whole grid, why not? Who are WE, who is THEY who can say otherwise?
Sorry, this is restraint of trade with considerable ramification for the welfare of very many people.
And it is crass, sweaty corpulent belly hang over the crotch of the very place where these testicular masses ought to exist. If you cannot see what you are supposed to have, no wonder some have stopped rummaging among their pandered vile expense account folds of fetid flesh, to find the pair we tell them they lack.
This is illegal.
Not in any sense Max would have construed it to be a question of sporting legality, it is illegal, criminal, for by the definition of crime, permissiveness of this practice or action harms society at large.
Now, let MB flood the market for engines.
That’s not “dumping”. They have what people want.
Does not every manufacturer want to be there, among the very best, to show their mettle? Dispute that question is beyond scope and time for now, we know for certain many more manufacturers would be in, if they only saw a way that made any sense. This has been tangible, all these years, and yet we so nearly bought Bernie’s cracking how they come and go and piss about and aren’t true like his friends in red… well, yes, companies change, people and ideas are changed, economies change, and so does the lineup for every grid of every sport, but, amazingly, the modern FIA has made this fact a mere memory of those old enough to barely remember the multitude of marques and teams that graced every aspect of motorsport. This is a disgrace to the entirety of automotive competition, a generational crime.
As I have said elsewhere, if MB sell so many, other suppliers must compete. Then we shall have the reduction in cost, that we treat like it really is a fictional Holy Grail. What rot.
Bring on the capitalism, by making a socialist decision. Introduce the chance of teams getting by, let them bring what they want, but retain the ultimate accolades for who undertakes the full task.
Soon enough, if you give people a vibrant, living, market in which to deal and drive, you’ll get your ultimate competition, the one that matters, the one we can scream and shout about on a Sunday.
As for the powers that be, there is a wholesale failure. We need a party, we need someone to wake up and declare they want to be here, in this wonderful world, with these wonderful cars, and let their lungs rip holes in the air, with their protestations and devotions to what we know we all live, and just need to give some proper damned loving.
It’s not even a pissup in a brewery, everyone’s walking around useless despite the riches, Nephalists in the vat cellars, or Hogarth in a gin palace, eunuchs in the harem. But if we once realize, oh what a party it will be.
Eggnog, anyone?
What’s this really all about? Is it just a way to pressure Mercedes to allow more development for Renault and Ferrari? Or does Bernie really think he can get his way and return to NA engines?
The former
Testicular mass…made me snot coffee on my keyboard. Thanks Joe 🙂
(GrandPrixPlus subscription has been requested from Santa) 3rd Yr for me, great read!
“Testicular mass”. 😀
“The view of the commercial people is that a dominant Mercedes is not good for the sport (although we didn’t hear a peep when Ferrari won in a string of titles in a row a few years back). ”
Or when Red Bull won 4 in a row.
It’s always the ones who cannot get their heads round the regulations that squeal the loudest for a return to either the former rules, or ones they can get their heads round. Red Bull certainly have form in this matter, although I didn’t hear them squealing so much when they won their 4 titles in a row.
The answer is simple for these disgruntled teams, and one which you have uttered on quite a few occasions before:
“WORK HARDER.”
Agree 100%!!! Mercedes should benefit from being the best for as long as they are the best. Hamilton and Rosberg provide a lot of entertainment, so what’s the problem?
I suppose the ‘secret commissioners’ are too smart to fall for an invitation to line up on the grid and have Todt greet them one by one.
Or maybe their vanity might get the better of them …
Oh Joe, how I love your logic, yet I think we both believe we are pi**ing in the wind
And if the FIA said that the PU suppliers had to charge a miniscule figure to the small teams, for their high tech PU’s, and the suppliers declined this generous idea of the FIA, and said ” sorry but the price is what it is, you wanted high tech, you’ve got high tech, and with that comes a high price! “, what could the FIA do then? Absolutely sweet nothing, that’s what!
Merc, Renault, Honda, Ferrari, have the FIA and small teams over a barrel, and this was always going to happen unless there was a realistically priced, available over the counter, option, like a Cosworth PU. That was never going to happen, because PU’s are way, way too expensive to develop and build….welcome to the Green World mate. Where something for nothing is always on offer, but someone, somewhere has to foot the HUGE bill!
Fact is unless the engines are altered to reduce costs, the series will dwindle as it won’t be possible for new entrants to afford PU’s and there won’t be any new PU makers. If Honda has a torrid time, they can always get out, call their PU a Mugen, to save face, while Renault can always claim Union pressure in France, for pulling out, if they can’t compete. Anyway one looks at 2014 F1, it has been a major mistake to chose a road that is only taken up because of fears over a handful of tree huggers. F1 is a sport, which should entertain, and to do so, it should have a solid competitor base, and be cheap enough for people to form a team and be able to run one without budgets of £100m-£500m…..that is not just ridiculous, it’s obscene and considering the waste involved, immoral as well.
If Merc dominate the same or more in 2015, which is likely, then F1 will lose a huge swathe of casual viewers and hardcore fans too. I read somewhere that circuit attendance & tv, are 20% down, year on year….that is the elephant in the dining room, and the cause is lack of competition in F1. This didn’t start this year,but ceaseless fiddling with and tightening off, both machine and driver rulebooks, has squeezed F1 to a shadow of it’s former glories…personal viewpoint, obviously you will disagree Joe, but with all possible respect, as you told another contributor earlier this year, you haven’t bought a race day ticket in decades….unfortunately, a lot of fans, not because they have media accreditation, have done the same thing. I have always enjoyed your writing and your slant on things, and again, not knocking you, but you are inside the Circus, not on the outside like most of us, and if one is wrapped up inside something that one is passionate about, sometimes the trees get a bit in the way of the wood….much as you are probably correct to say that there aren’t going to be any 3 car teams, trust me on this, there are also not going to be any £5m PU’s….not unless they are about 5 years old and have 100,000kms on the clock!
I’ve never found that occasional visitors know more about a town than the people who live there!
It’s not about occasional visitors Joe, it’s just commonsense. The PU’s cost way way more than the motors they replaced. The world economic situation is still in a state of flux. I employ people, my business hasn’t increased prices for nearly 5 years, I’ve chopped suppliers and turned to others, to cut my costs. My staff haven’t had a pay rise until recently, for 5 years, in fact they all took a pay cut so I could carry on employing them, and even then, I had to make a redundancy, so that the others had jobs….F1 has been protected from this maelstrom until the last couple of years mostly because of long term sponsor contracts, and was arrogant enough to think it could carry on as usual. But it can’t, and going down this high tech-high cost route, was always insane imho.
There’s no logic that can be claimed in spending £20/30 or 40m a year on something when an alternative could be had for £5m, although I think that even £5m a year is an absurd figure for engine supply!
The big teams are too arrogant and insular to see what is going to happen and what is in fact already happening….some motor racing person said recently, ( was it Lopez? ) that spending the sums that are involved in F1 for a performance factor of 6-7 secs a lap over a GP2 car is ridiculous, and that is very true….every one should wake up and smell the espresso, I’ve followed motorsport for 50 years, F1 included, and it has never been as insanely expensive as this is, it is a suicidal situation and needs sensible reform asap!
No, it is not common sense because you are diluting the real F1.
F1 has evolved, perhaps wrongly in some respects. If one proposed the concept of stipulations on tyre compound usage, an FIA appointed tyre supplier, double points and DRS overtaking even as recent as eight years ago it would have been described as against the ethos of the competition and devaluing the credibility of the sport. Sadly, that boat has already sailed a long time ago and PUs will probably end up going the same way since the decision-makers continue to work based on self-interest as opposed to the good of the sport.
For me, the real F1, or a vital enervating and perennial delight, regardless of attainment, and from this a wonderful super-reality of it, was for long the hope to see big budgets and works cars beaten by guile and skill in the garage and on the track by comparative minnows.
There was even that word, courage, which could be extraordinary trust in the car by a driver (among many definitions for a driver) or to my mind also a team attempting a mechanically punishing strategy at risk to scarce facility.
I think Bernie had a kind of knee jerk reaction to having the manufacturers present in force. His eyes were so firmly on the prize of a IPO, his management style so anathema to how manufacturers — scratch that, real businesses — are happy to work. They got booted. I think we’re left with the effect of accumulated distrust, overhanging even the way we, or maybe it just appears so, think.
Of course, you, as a ruthless man, want suddenly unwelcome guests to appear to be leaving in a huff, rather than appear a poor host, so that was arranged. He was all too effective at getting people to believe the manufacturers were the big bad wolf about to eat little F1’s precious innocence. For…. agh… how many times do people — adults — let that performance just carry on, “oh, there’s Bernie, bless, turning it all on its head again, he’ll wear himself out in a bit”. Really? There is a collective shame of permissiveness, here, to reflect upon.
Anything I say in summary will leave me very unhappy with the result. That’s the truism which is leaving F1 short of answers, and possibly hamstrung for debate: I believe we need long form analysis merely to start upon defining discussion. But I think the story of the IPO is that there is no saleable equity in a things such as a racing meeting. The value is only in the meeting, fundamentally. And a fundamental of F1, is that no big company has ever worked out how to not cast a penumbra and wilt smaller competitors. Enlightened action by far flung departments no longer comes easily to the post matrix management multinational. But too much is artificially broke. If once you were almost dumb not to run a DFV variant, what of the MB PU? Well they can only sell so many. What? I mean what kind of reward is that for a top job of design? The problem may be of over-design, but there’s a sport- and industry- wide debate. Logically, if there’s such a gap of performance, price or convenience or need to compete, or some mix of that, pointing to one engine, everyone wants one. Assuming there is anyone else. Anything else is artificial. I would argue that avoiding a universally MB powered grid is the reason to get manufacturers to come in with serious money, not limit their embarrassment.
For engines to be “cheap”, design costs have to be amortized, as may happen with a “lock out” success like the DFV, or I doubt it, but the MB PU, and you need a surplus of supply. I.E. more manufacturers coming in plain desperate to get their engines into winning cars. Then I can see a 5MM PU being sold “as is” because of other economies.
The real missing components in this equation, are just glaring by their absence, are they not?
The real F1 used Hewland gearboxes and Cosworth engines, in the main, from 1968 to 1988, it also sold cars to individuals who wanted to be in F1. Frank Williams would not be in F1 without having bought Brabham, DeTomaso and March cars. There was nothing diluted or wrong headed about F1 in those days. Drivers were paid fair salaries, why back in 1961/62, Moss reckoned he earned £32,000 and a Brain Surgeon was on comparable money. How many Consultants are now on £25m a year??
F1 should be a sport people can enter and make a living at, not something for car makers to play with at a mere whim.
I know you’ll say the world has moved on, yes it did for several decades, but now we all know that it has to change back into a place where people can make decent money, and business can survive in F1. The current model is diluting F1 and ruining it.
I’m just thinking what a wonderful, resourceful, multifaceted man, is Sir Stirling. I find I wish to hear more of his non racing life, always.
Reason for this thought: amongst all the vibrant past, we simply had more resourceful men, more grown up drivers, even when young, who did whatever it took to get a drive, or in Sir Stirling’s style, what it took to get a drivel then another and then another all in one day, often in more than one trial or race,
There is of course, the cradle to the grave life of many Formula One drivers, brought up as they have been, by a generation who started to think of F1, and indeed much else in motorsport, as a career like you might set out to be a lawyer, or chemist. Oh, come on, I don’t say this doesn’t work, for some, but how far off is it, to a seat in a F1 car, when daddy first shows you to a cart? I think the story has to be much sadder for so many, now, that we’ve got at least one, probably two and possibly three, generations, brought up in a straightjacket blinkered life that becomes as much a trap and a noose and a source of mental fatigue and disappointment all so intense and peculiar to a world still so rarified form normal walks of life, that the greater challenge than winning over all, surely is to win over as a normal human being in reality.
This is a well worn argument, but I’m prompted again, by the thought that, well intentioned or not, we stripped all of motorsport of the vivacity and glorious complexity of wider life that enriched our heroes and our own childhoods, so very not that long ago. I day this, not having children, at forty, but wondering lately at the sheer gaps of years in my family, to have been brought up by Georgian era parents, almost, and how that, although it was nit exactly a singular puzzle, presented a different set of challenges to solve. In fact it still does orient as a puzzle, I have to think about my personal relationships often mindful of my upbringing, to make them work. Anyhow, we’re dealing with the nurture more than the nature, not only of the young aspirants but the youthful entrant teams and all involved. And I think we’ve been collectively irresponsible.
Worse, we let the input into motorsport from just freshness of character, to sources if finance, and hence the reach out to potential fans. Once at least a passing knowledge of some motorsport, was almost a given. You could chat a bit in the pub anyhow, fairly reliably, and get a conversation. If there were pubs still, I doubt anyone would be able to go much beyond “Yeah, I’m a Lewis fan” because they simply have noticed him and then that’s about it.
I do not think we just “moved on”. I don’t think it’s so neat, either, Damian, in agreement with your sentiments. I’m very worried. Worried in the way that makes me want to jump up and do something, so worried in the good way that says something can very much still be done. But worried, nonetheless. And I care as much for all of this sport of racing automobiles in every way short of mater familia. The less a family we are within a nation or nations of families, the less we have to compare, and that includes having a increasingly separate world for lifestyle and money. In what demographic category do you place a man who says they still go to the race meets regularly? There’s your problem, but let’s stop bashing F1 for it, at least not alone.
Always interested in your views JoJ, and yes, in my youth, drivers raced different series, to make money. This should happen again. For one thing, it would make the drivers less diva like and more rounded people, and for another, it would give the fans more chances to see them actually driving, and also allow the F1 guys to be compared to drivers in lower formulae….nothing bad about that. It would also open the ” only F1 fan ” up to what other aspects of motorsport that there are.
Aside, for Damian, if I may: I fear we are simply hit time and again by the simple fact that our working capital costs (proportionately) many times that of a large or sophisticated company. Equations such as that has led private equity to penetrate so many often befuddling reaches of business. Worse, customers tend to be upstream, and we are supplying them, to prices they determine by such cheap capital, cutting our own flesh to make the vig that’s simply a financial “anomaly”. Financial subsidy. When I say “customers tend to be upstream and big”, I’m taking a educated guess you work in a highly skilled, possibly manufacturing, or engineering, specialist, where human capital is what’s made to sweat by default. Not the visions of leveraging the skills and experience we attained, which is the certain hope (“in sure and certain hope […] we lay to rest our dearly beloved, today…”) of the ages of modern technologies, but a process of reducing our material aspirations to below the rate of increase in cost of fairly unremarkable, modest, living. If so, I get to live it vicariously, but very real in illusion, with second order derivative effects, some multiplied, because it’s the heart of so much business advertising. One of the propositions of my long term work is to invert aspects of the financing equations that pinch so hard, albeit in narrow ways. More broadly, it’s quite scary what sum total of brainpower you need strapped to a desk just to tick over, and I feel woe for the prospects of even bright young talents too often. One takeaway filip from my above thunk, is that I would protest there’s a awful lot of direct owners of apparently very small (headcount) firms, able to scope out what it might take to do well in F1. And they are part of the target market for F1, increasingly so even. This wasn’t meant as a nice little backrub, even if I beg forgiveness in that case for we could all do with one, but a thought exercise, or the seed of one, about fans of a certain kind, and how big sponsors may be perceived.
Good discussion and some well thought out arguments.
Thank you, Bob. I may be increasingly regurgitating long held convictions, but I hope I’m finding for the better, lately, how they pose themselves as a genuine part of my life, and I’m I think only lately finding a new ease with which to express these relationships. I’m very glad you appreciate. Yours ~ joj
Most of the money is now spent. Development, production and support cost money but the mega bucks were spent in the run up to race one.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think there was a massive drop-off in F1’s fanbase when Schumacher and Ferrari were dominating for half a decade.
And I can’t help but ponder how things might have turned out had Ari Vatanen ended up as FIA boss instead of Jean Todt 😈
There was a drop off
“If the FIA had not sold its right to make unilateral decisions…” A Bernie and Max deal, if I recall rightly.
Nope.
I’ll be self moderating this morning.
I had (perhaps wrongly) assumed that engine regs were the agenda for 2016 and it was survival of the small teams that the FIA wanted to resolve right now.
The whole set up has created a right royal mess of the sport right now!
Hello Joe
Thank you for this insightful piece. We will know more in 2 days I believe.
If it gets to a vote, I really can’t see Monsieur Todt using his FIA votes in support of BCE. To do so would be to invite chaos as you observe.
Mercedes has been lets say dominant for just one year. And while its not always the case, M has achieved its success through commitment, significant investment and competent management. We saw the dominant years of Ferrari and more recently the 4 world championships of SV at Red Bull. I don’t recall Mr Horner and his associates complaining at the time. I’m sure the performance bonuses were much appreciated. Certainly its not sporting that Mercedes’ singular success in 2014 should now be made to be a rod for its back.
But BCE must be well aware of the odds in such a vote. I still think he’s rattling the cage telling all he wants Mars when in truth he would be satisfied with the Moon.
I think I find myself looking forward to the appointment of Mr Walsh ?
Excellent analysis and very informative post, Joe. Perfect title, too. It’s all just political games from Bernie. While the FIA under Todt might have forsaken its unilateral intervention rights so it would no longer be seen as “Ferrari International Assistance”, as Flavio called it, that role seems to be taken up by Bernie.
As things stand it seems that the intent of the last EU Commission on F1, has in practice, been seriously bent, twisted and perverted.
Such a simple concept, that the FIA is the ruling body and makes and enforces the rules, but has no commercial input or benefit, while the commercial side is operated by the rights holder (even if for an infeasibly long period)
Instead The FIA is a pathetic shadow of it’s former self. Todt actually said he no longer had the necessary power. Well his predecessor certainly did, so it has diminished since Todt came to be president, thus he must assume responsibility.
If he came out and apologised to the FI audience and media and then resigned, he could just about be forgiven for creeping away quietly in disgrace. I doubt he would be missed, we never hear from him.
Why does he not just appoint someone (a vice president, if there are stacks of them hanging about) to deal with F1 on his behalf and leave them to it. (my guess is he cannot delegate for fear of loss of direct control, not that he bothers controlling F1 anyway)
As a long standing fan and an old git, I am angry and frustrated to see the governance of the sport so blatantly subverted, those who should be in power, professing impotence and the whole subjected to secret commercial agreements which more and more directly contradict the existing written regulations.
Both Bernie and Todt need to go, so that some straightforward agreements can replace the secret convolutions that now appear to run the sport. Bernie was great, he isn’t any more! Todt was lucky to have a good team, under him at Ferrari, but he is no use to F1 now.
Pomp, status and dinners should not form the main objectives of a president.
Well stated rpaco, cheers!
I find the fact certain media outlets are running the story of returning to the V8s without question to be utterly laughable.
Are there really people who believe all the work that has gone into producing this new engine formula is just going to be thrown in the bin?
No, but there are Muppets who write what Bernie tells them to write…
todt has another 3 years to go …can he stand again joe ?
maybe we could get him into the same old folks home as bernie after
or president de la republique ? he seems eminently qualified !
I believe that he can stand again.
The crux of the biscuit is that the homoligation rules need to be changed. Yes, Mercedes built a better mousetrap, but the current homoligation rules state that Ferrari and Renault (and Honda?) cannot catch up with equivalent systems. All of the manufacturers wanted the current hybrid systems, or “some” would leave the sport. Honda ENTERED the sport because of it. The issue at hand is that all the manufacturers hands are tied. How is it that with an entirely new system in place, the FIA will not permit development? This is is not only ignorant, it’s also insane. The whole reason manufacturers wanted the current hybrid systems was so they could develop them to continue to their road cars and trucks. However the Homoligation rules do not permit them to. What’s the point for a company like Renault, or even Mercedes? Mercedes is currently on top, however they too are restricted in developing the systems further as well. How does that help them, or anyone else, from making the systems for their road car and truck programs? The proposals to bring back V10 engines is all just a red herring. The only rule that needs changing is the unanimous manufacture voting rule, which allows one manufacture to keep the rules status quo, in order to keep themselves on the podium, which if any of the other manufacturers were in their situation, they’d do the same. Let us be reminded that the manufacturers themselves wanted the current systems. Lets untie their hands.
But they CAN upgrade their power systems. All the teams have had the 9 months from the time of the first freeze to come up with improvements. The big question is how good a job have they done. Will the gaps get smaller or bigger?
Yes anyone who actually bothers to read the tech regs can see that almost the whole PU can be changed, with limits on what can be changed getting tighter each year. It is entirely theoretically possible that Renault and/or Ferrari’s PU’s will knock spots of the Merc unit next season. They have had a free hand to develop all sorts of options during the last year but not to put them on the track. Now is the time that all the engine and ERS advances can be applied.
I am afraid that the personality of one of the loudest complainers has been modified, he forgets how it was when he won 4 in a row, he didn’t want the engine regs changed then did he? Doe he not realise how bad his new attitude looks now? He used to be above the Ferrari strategy, (keep changing or vetoing rules until we win) Now it looks like Ginger is in charge. Remember when Red Bull was about fun?
It would seem that JT and BE have personal motivations in not proclaiming 2014 as the vintage year which I think it was.
I do hope that somebody gets a grip on F1 before the ‘Golden Goose’ if not killed is weakened by personal aggrandisement.
Maybe a Q & A interview with an EU member would make a good story at some point—re what they have done/are doing/are not….
The problem with the FIA having some sort of unilateral right is that their decisions could be equally wrong for the sport. Given the past presidents of the FIA have not exactly been balanced, putting more power in their hands might not be the best outcome for the sport.
I had a good laugh, Damian, when you made a point that Joe, by his own admission, hadn’t bought a raceday ticket for years. As if that showed some lack of financial commitment or understanding of what fans go through to follow their sport.
I prefer to think of he and I as fans who have been blessed to find a way to make their life passion their jobs too, and would point out that before either of us or any of the other freelance hacks earns a penny, somewhere between £20,000 and £35,000 a season has to come off the top to pay for the cost of travelling to every race, not just one raceday. I think we have commitment and understanding…
Happy Christmas everyone. Maybe Santa will wave a magic wand and we’ll find a repaired, happy and well organised F1 tucked into the stockings. There again, maybe not. But travel in hope, right?
I would second that. Sometimes it is best to think things through before leaving comments that serve only to antagonise the people who are trying to help you understand the business.
David and Joe, I am fully aware that you guys spend a lot of money on media passes to the series,I wasn’t taking the p*** out of either of you, maybe I didn’t write the comment as I meant it to mean. However what I wanted to point out is that your experience in F1 is a whole world different to that of the fan who pays absurd amounts for a raceday ticket, or who pays absurd pay per view subs, and only earns excitement out of their experience.
The plain fact is that, if you read what others write as comments, aside from just me, the general view is that F1 is not as good as it used to be. No one was keen on the V8’s and not many seem enthused about the PU’s either, the V8/V10/V12’s were really good engines, and next to what we have now, as cheap as chips. And current F1 can’t continue indefinitely as it is, it is financially unsustainable.
The Car makers are not in business to subsidise McLaren or Williams or Force India etc, and CVC are only there to make money, they are not going to give hand outs to small teams headed for the wall.
Going back to my first sentence, I was a motorsport fan before I read the reports you guys did and now continue to do. I have always liked your stuff, bought books written by you, so why should I wish to antagonise either of you?
My actual point was that you are so immersed in F1, that sometimes it appears to some of us, that you are not looking at the whole picture, just a narrow aspect of it. Whatever one’s view on PU’s, at this stage of the economic cycle of the planet, it wasn’t the brightest idea financially.
As I said, you won’t get manufacturers to sell their high tech high cost goodies for pennies, they are not interested. And CVC won’t chuck money at people to buy PU’s. so the blindingly obvious alternative is to use cheaper engines, and best to get someone to build them that can sustain a business off the back of the sales and maintenance. The flip side is to see F1 reduced to maybe 12-14 cars at best, and Merc cruising to 2-3 more titles, by which time there won’t be any fans left except in the Press Centres of the circuits.
Wishing you both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year….and keep it cool guys, I don’t go round deliberately antagonising anyone, my friends would tell you, I’m a very fun bloke who respects others and treats them like I expect to be treated in return, so no bad feelings!
“There won’t be any fans left except in the Press Centres of the circuits…”
I wouldn’t necessarily call the media who cover F1, “fans.”
These Journalist are hard-core, and travel an ungodly amount of miles every year. While it might seem glamorous from the outside, it’s hardly a party!
Be grateful to have this insight.
Hear, hear!
Kimi R, am I knocking the availability of this blog to give more insight to what used to be an open and accessible sport?? If you read my comments again, I’m sure that you will gather that I’m not knocking Joe or David, both of whom are top class journalists in the sport, and in my book, both can be compared with the likes of DSJ, Roebuck, Alan Henry etc, all great reporters on motorsports down the decades. And the best media people in the sport, imho, are those who are real fans too, as opposed to those who are just reporters for newspapers and local news media in an area.
So, when Ferrari dominate for years with one car, that’s fine.
When Red Bull dominate for years with one car, that’s fine.
But Mercedes dominate for one year and save what could have been a walkover, making it instead a tight battle for the championship, suddenly we need to get rid of hybrid power?
Remembering, of course, that the sole reason for introducing hybrid power units was to prevent dominance.
(NB that was sarcasm)
Jason C, ( Without sarcasm as I don’t have a need for it ), nope, any domination by aero or engine advantage becomes boring. Domination by a driver with a talent level higher than a lot of others, is not boring. So watching a Moss or Clark or Stewart isn’t boring because others had similar spec tools, but were beaten by talent, not a secret aero tweak or an engine with 100 more bhp.
And who says the hybrids were introduced to prevent dominance….and dominance of what? Engines?
It has been the case all this century that F1 has become more choked off in terms of design and more expensive in terms of cost.
I don’t know what you do in work, but in most developed nations on the planet, where the financial crisis of the last 7 years has hit home, pretty much everyone and every business has been forced to tighten belts and reduce base operating costs, while terminating items that where actually luxury costs that could be lived without. This has not been the case in F1, which has collectively buried its head in the sand and ignored financial reality.
Do we want to go back to the 1930’s and just have 2 competitive teams? Or do we want to emulate the late 1950’s, the 60’s etc, when rear engines came in again, with cheap Climax engines and people could build cheap racers or buy a good Brabham or Cooper off the shelf.
Let’s not kid ourselves, F1 is not science, it is a sport and an entertainment, if that is not the case, it has no purpose to exist.
Hi Damian, you make no sense. Of course journalists that work in the sport you follow have a different view than you. That equips them to do their jobs and create material you read (in this case for free). To say they aren’t looking at the “whole picture” is ludicrous.
Jodum5, read what I wrote again, and you will see it makes perfect sense. Any human being involved in any activity, who becomes totally immersed in that said activity, tends to have a narrower viewpoint than one who is outside that activity.
This is why it is often the case that troubled businesses bring in people who have had no previous experience of a certain business sector, because that person has the valuable asset of being impartial to the new activity that they are asked to oversee, and can bring a fresh pair of eyes and fresh thinking to the situation.
You could come along to a business that I run, and probably point out things that I do wrong or could do better. I could probably do the same for you.
That is the point. F1 has become entirely separate from other forms of motorsport over the last 20 years or so. That is a bad thing, and it has left F1 isolated and in an introverted “bubble”. This is the major reason that nothing gets sorted although much is wrong about F1. However the major participants can’t see anything wrong about it from their viewpoint, and that is because they are not viewing the big picture, they are only looking at the series from an internal basis and not understanding that what has caused the collapse of small teams can also drag them down in time.
There seems to be an assumption underlying some of the comments here that if F1 goes back to the V8 or V10 NA powerplants, that engine costs will magically drop back to $10m dollars per team.
That assumption is not necessarily valid. Existing manufacturers, except possibly for Ferrari, would not be interested in going that route. Cosworth was charging $10m per season for 3 teams and apparently did not make much of a profit even with those 3 teams. Other V8 and V10 suppliers were manufacturers who were already spending a small fortune on their works team – the $10m from a customer team was a drop in the bucket for revenues, but did allow them to claim to their boards that they had 4 (or 6) cars on the grid. All the indications were that $10m did not cover their costs, but there were other benefits that they could point to.
So…if the rules makers ram through a change back to the previous generation of power plants, the only way F1 can have engines supplied to the entire grid quickly is by some combination of Ferrari and Cosworth. Ferrari could simply look after itself, and Cosworth has no current F1 program to be held hostage, so why would they return unless can make a proper profit?
The only alternative would be to specify a “cheap and cheerful” much lower-revving standard powerplant, with or without KERS, and sign a deal with an engine builder to supply all of the teams (this ignores the Red Team in Maranello, which could hardly be expected to agree unless they were the sole supplier, but we’ll let that slide for the moment). This would be similar to the deal that Cosworth had with CART in the last years of that series. The engine supplier would trade sophistication for build volume, allowing it to cut supply costs.
I think that the cost of engine supply for a 2 car team would be a lot more than $10m a season, unless somebody arranges for a subsidy for the teams…
Back in the early 1950’s a similar problem was resolved by F2 becoming F1 for 2 years, after which new engine rules applied and makers had products ready to race and to sell to others.
The principal reason that lower tech V8/V10’s were expensive, from what I recall, was that the extremes of rev limits required tech solutions that involved amongst other thing, enormously expensive rare minerals, in the engine construction. This should have been avoided with sensible revision of rules to cover the issue, and prevent crazy and pointless spending.
I don’t know if anyone has other answers to the matter, but I can’t see car builders selling PU’s today for £30m or whatever, and then dropping that to £5m for 2015.
Similarly, I can’t see CVC subsidising £30m PU’s to small teams so that the said teams can have those PU’s for £5m instead of £30m.
The cost basis that surrounds these power units, is just unsustainable. I think most people here have noted this, Joe amongst them. The question is how to alter this. Some say, well force the makers to provide cheaper engines, however this is business and you cannot simply “force” a business to sell its goods at a low value, especially when it costs a huge sum for the business to make the item.
What you can do is introduce commercial competition, and thereby drive down the price, if the original provider or providers, wish to continue in the particular market.
However you won’t get other competition, if the prospective competitor business cannot see any possible profit to be made, which in the case of selling PU’s at the current price and most certainly at a hugely reduced price, is undeniable.
Put another way, if the price of a grandstand seat at Silverstone is set for 2015 at £2000, hardly anyone will take the offer up. If it is reduced ( because Bernie/CVC change their business method ) and goes down to £75-100 a seat, there will be queues all night to buy the tickets!
F1 is pricing itself out of business and needs to change. It is pointless to say it is fine, or to say that it will be better with 5-6 or 7 teams, or to say that the marques can be forced to make the motive force cheaper…it won’t happen. So a new perspective needs to be put in place, whereby it is much much cheaper overall, to enter and run an F1 team. Doing so will vastly reduce the monies swirling around F1, but it will also allow it to survive as a sport, and bring new followers into the fold, so that it can prosper in the real world, and not as Fantasy Island.It would also assist in employment terms as more teams would help take up the slack in unemployed F1 staff. Sure the factories would not need so many staff, but doubling the grid would help re-employ quite a large number, and there would be better chances for people, to start their own businesses supplying parts to F1 teams, the sort of thing that used to happen before it all got out of hand.
Regarding the lack of civil servants… It sounds like you are complaining about privatization and austerity.
I don’t feel antagonised at all, Damian, I was just making a point. And I was a fan who paid to watch races before I began to work in the sport, albeit a while ago now. I have in more recent years paid to get my kids into circuits, and I talk to fans I meet at races, so trust me, I have a fair idea of how poor the value for money is that F1 currently offers to those outside its professional circle.
I would add, however, that all we hear these days from the team bosses is how the sport needs to engage with its fans. Not a word about input from the media who are, after all, one of the bridges between those fans and the sport.
I think Joe and I see a pretty decent amount of the big picture, given that we spend our lives travelling with the circus (and have done so for more than a quarter of a century), talking to so many people within it and engaging with fans we meet across the world (especially Mr S via his regular Evenings with Joe), and seemingly discussing it with each other and our individual circles all the time – live, sleep, breathe, etc. I’m not so sure that those who are doing the actual racing see much more than their own self-interest, though.
Like they say, those who can, do; those who can’t watch it or write about it!
It’s a paradox; if those guys weren’t completely wrapped up in their own world of competition (and survival), they would probably be joining the rest of us on the sidelines rather than operating at the epicentre, so asking them to see the big picture is difficult and often pointless. Another reason why the sport needs far-sighted governance…
Hi David, well I’m glad that we have sorted that point! As I expect you know yourself, sometimes the way one puts out a comment to a blog, like a text or an email, can somehow cause a bit of upset, when that was never the intention of the writer!
For the record, as I said, I like reading your views,and Joe’s and those of other proper racing journos, this is how my love of the sport began, a chance read at 8 of a MS column by DSJ….I was so fascinated that I soon found MN and AS, and stopped reading Motor & Commercial Motor ( we had a fleet of trucks in our family business ), and it was not long then when I was able entreat a family member, to take me to Thruxton……after which I was sold on speed….and still am now!
As to your other comments, it is a major problem isn’t it? I maybe wrong, but I still feel that to get the costs down to a sustainable level, then many things need to be done, and much as the 1.6 V6’s are very clever, the build and maintenance costs seem unsustainable for a motor racing engine. We all have favourites, but my personal one, is the 3000cc naturally aspirated F1 engine, particularly in V12 guise. The 1500cc turbos were exciting, but only because the power factor was insane, and they flamed out so well, the noise they made was nowhere near as good as a Matra V12…..still that’s just my view.
I don’t contend that hybrids are not clever, I do think they sound awful, but most of all, if they had to be done, they have been introduced about 5 years too early, and that is the problem, right now the costs are not reasonable, and this is damaging F1. Joe is correct that most of the problem could be sorted if CVC & the big teams, Ferrari in particular, made some effort to spread the monies better and looked after the smaller teams. But realistically this is not going to happen in a capitalist environment, and so other actions will need to be wrought, so that F1 does not sink and disappear. That’s my view for what it’s worth.
David, the phrase that most commonly springs to mind when I see F1 leaders being interviewed and talking about the sport is “living in a bubble”. They inhabit a strange world, full of sophisticated technology, highly focussed and competitive engineers and athletes, lots of money, famous people and global travel. It is no surprise to me that when they open their mouths, a significant percentage of the time they manage to sound as though the have only a tenuous connection (and in some cases no understanding) of everyday reality.
So when Bernie Ecclestone makes some throwaway comment about Rolexes, or some tough-sounding statement about living within your means, assuming that it is not him simply trying to generate column inches (which it is a lot of the time with Bernie), it does rather sound to me as though he left the normal world that most of us live in a long time ago, and is therefore pretty damn clueless about what goes on in our world. The inevitable result is that I find myself increasingly muttering “do these people have any idea what a bunch of over-entitled tossers they sound like” when I read their latest utterances.
There is way too much hubris in F1 at present. A peak of hubris is usually the prelude to some painful epiphanies. Joe has laid out the strategic challenges, but given that F1 teams always manage to give the impression that they collectively couldn’t even agree which way to head to find the brewery, much less organize the piss-up, I forsee yet more years of painful mini-crises and muddling through.
Ah, the discovery of Autosport and MN… Mine came after the Race of Champions in 1968, the first race I witnessed. Up until then I read Autocar and Motor’s excellent sports pages – Eoin Young’s column far outstripped Jenks in my opinion – and then found a copy of Autosport in the local newsagents at which I worked on weekends. Soon after that came Motoring News. Funny, since I went on to edit that paper for the best part of 14 years, I can’t remember exactly how I discovered it.
I’m fortunate to have many back numbers of each for research, but sometimes it’s frightening to see just how much the sport has changed and how F1 has trampled on everything else and sucked the money out of it. The writing was on the wall when Eddie Jordan was takling £8k for postage stamp-sized LiquiMoly stickers on the rear wings of his cars in 2003. That was club racing money hoovered up into F1.
Happy festive season, chaps and chapesses!
Yes, the excitement of MS once a month, soon expanded to a weekly MN, and then to AS, where a few years into readership, I think it was 1973, I read what I still consider to be the single best race report of any sort that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, it was a report on the Targa Florio, and was written by Pete Lyons. He wrote it on a mountain viewpoint, sitting throughout the race at that spot, and viewing it with all the fans around him, while tuning into their experience. It was a magical read, by a guy who also wrote great F1 reports, as well as US racing too.
And you’re right, F1 has sucked the life out of the lower formulae, which is particularly worrying. I know Joe thinks I’m stuck in the Jurassic, but to my mind, it would not hurt if F1 shrunk to say 14 rounds, and F1 driver’s wages shrank hugely, so that they would need to race in other series to make up the loss, as drivers did in the past, when Graded drivers raced in F2 ( now we’re cooking on gas! ) and the likes of Pedro & Jo rubbed bodywork in 917’s around Europe!!
I find these days of the ” only F1 fan ” rather sad, and I feel sorry for them, in that they seem to think there is only F1, and there is no other motorsport, or at least no other type that counts.
One of my fondest memories was of the insane SuperSaloons such as the Boss Capri of Mick Hill, who sadly passed away the other week, and Gerry Marshall’s BigBertha, the CanAm VW Karmann Ghia and stuff like that….modern saloons do nothing at all for me, it’s all contrived and all the cars look much the same…there’s no real spectacle that I can see or feel….still I saw a lot back then, and MS keeps reminding me every month just how damn good it all was ( excepting the regular deaths, which modern motorsport has thankfully overcome in the main ).
Apart from all that, Eoin Young ( bless him! ) better than DSJ!!!! Heresy David!! What would The Bod say about that eh?? I didn’t always agree with his trenchant views, but DSJ seemed to me, to be the Ultimate Racing Fan, he wouldn’t have accepted the modern ” corral ” approach driver contact, I can just imagine his views on that, and some other aspects, but I’d guess he would have been impressed with the 1.6 V6’s……probably not so much with the fancy electronic parts though!
Wishing you and yours a Happy Christmas and a nice break from the awfulness of airports and planes.
Well D .C. What’s your opinion on the sound of the V12 three litre BRM? Or was that a 3-3 lol ?Just trying to inject a little humour. Your comment re the sound of F 1 motors got me thinking. Ford has just launched their latest Mustang 4 Cyl and apparently if you pull the audio fuse the fake tuned motor sound quits! So if all the big boys are dabbling with sound to improve sales $$$ suggest to BCE instead of double points at end of season , award points for best sounding power unit ! We already have self parking cars ! How long will it be before DOT/MOT mandates minimal sound footprints within urban residential centres controlled by onboard technology? In return for a free pass for the glorious V12 shriek out in the boonies! I hear marketing possibilities for Ferrari and Matra? …. F1 ? =Financial implosion? Switch to F2 to retain jobs and skills,weed out all those pensioners at the levers of power and start again !
But that’s easy for me to say , as I am not invested in F1 as Joe and pals are! I have spent my entire working life in the dying embers of failing industry’s so am cognicent of how it feels.Vaudville and Burlesque were once thriving entertainment as was F1 ! Just ask Bernie?…….
Hey Jeffrey, yes, BRM, Matra, Ferrari, and…Techno! Any of these, as well as short term Maserati and Weslake V12’s floated my boat. F5000 V8 Chevys too. The 1000cc F3 screamers, so many types of sound to be absorbed during a race meeting back then. And the 3.3 BRM? Well sometimes they seemed to have performance and reliability ( poor Amon at Spa 1970! ), but it was also said that Enzo would roll out his 3.3 for Monza…..maybe it was true, who knows? It was fun to speculate! Of course, as I grew up in a quarrying environment, with loud noise all around me for 10 hours a day,and then my race meets on a sunday, as well as assaulting my ears with Saturday nights at the nearest big town disco’s, now in my late fifties the hearing is not what it used to be….but I wouldn’t trade any of the past to have the ears working 100% again! They are still good enough to enjoy the shrill 8000rpm of a Cosworth BDA in the mists of Kielder Forest…..ah, bliss! If one doesn’t understand the part noise plays in the overall motorsport experience, then 7am in a forest, with a fast approaching MK2 Escort, ought to go a long way to explain the importance of sound to motorsport at all levels.
The funny thing with the idea of much quieter cars and electric cars, is that there have to be fake engine noises, otherwise they are a danger to pedestrians!
Thanks Damian. And Joe for not deleting my madcap idea! I am in Palm Springs where one has to be very aware of traffic as there are numerous electric cars! And those Teslas are very quick from a standing start! I have always considered the “Audible warning of approach ” redundant , as if a driver has the time to sound the horn ? They are better off braking and steering to avoid the obstruction !