http://motorsport.nextgen-auto.com/New- ... uture.htmlNew F1 cost-cutting deal slackened for future
The new agreement will be in place until 2017
F1’s cost-reducing programme has taken what might be regarded as a backwards step.
Known as the Resources Restriction Agreement (RRA), the deal this year includes a clause limiting each team to spending just EUR40 million on external services.
The cap was set to reduce to 20 million in 2011, but Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport said the teams have agreed to increase the limit next year to 30m.
Moreover, team staff numbers were set to be capped at 350 people, reducing to 280 a year later.
But the latter number has now been increased to 315, with the total agreement extended through 2017. The former agreement was set to expire in 2012.
"The good news is that the teams have agreed to extend the duration of the RRA," FOTA chairman Martin Whitmarsh confirmed.
"In doing that, there’s been some adjustment, so it’s been agreed in principle and everyone has signed up to that," added the McLaren boss.
"In some areas it’s been tightened, in some areas it’s been slackened," admitted the Briton.
The existing agreement also limits things like staff numbers at grands prix, the use of wind tunnels and CFD, and track testing.
"I think there was a danger that we wouldn’t be able to extend it (the agreement)," continued Whitmarsh. "I think all the teams took a sensible approach to come together and to agree to extend it for a long period of time."
Ferrari, meanwhile, confirmed that the new agreement will be in place until 2017.
Sorry people for bothering you with the full text of the Autosport publication. Unfortunately AS will block all articles one month from publishing and we will need this reference a bit longer I think.RBR denies overspending in 2010
By Jonathan Noble Saturday, January 8th 2011, 17:12 GMT
Red Bull Racing has dismissed suggestions it overspent last year and breached Formula 1's Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA), as behind-the-scenes efforts continue to try and frame fresh cost restraints for 2011.
Members of the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) have been pushing hard in recent weeks to sign off a fresh RRA to run from 2011-2017, after the outline framework for such a deal was agreed at last year's Singapore Grand Prix.
Those efforts have so far failed, however, amid a lack of consensus about amendments to the original deal. These are understood to include which areas of teams' spending should be within the RRA, including KERS development; how long the period of review for overspending should be, and how any penalties for overspending should be dealt with.
Sources suggest that Red Bull Racing has been particularly vocal in the most recent FOTA meetings about clamping down on areas of spending outside the RRA, and in pushing for changes in the review period for overspending and how penalties are dealt with when there is a breach.
That stance prompted FIA president Max Mosley to suggest at the end of last year that the only reason Red Bull Racing may have wanted such changes was because it overspent on its way to the title double last year.
Mosley told Auto Motor Und Sport before Christmas: "Red Bull asked for an exception. If that's true, that can only mean they spent more than they were allowed, and now they're asking for the [other] teams' approval. I am interested to know how their opponents are going to react."
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner insists, however, that such claims of overspend are wide of the mark.
He says that his team came within the budget limit that it agreed to for 2010, with teams' accounts having now been lodged with FOTA, and that any push it is making for changes is simply because it wants the RRA to be fair for everyone.
"The RRA has been a positive thing for Formula 1 - as it has genuinely saved costs," Horner told AUTOSPORT.
"Contrary to speculation, we completely adhered to the RRA within 2010 - and Red Bull Racing had only perhaps the third or fourth-largest budget in Formula 1. We've achieved great efficiency in reducing the headcount versus our external spend.
"We are all in favour of containing costs moving forward, and the RRA is a good way of achieving that - as long as it is consistent, fair, equitable and transparent across all the activities of all the teams. We don't want to turn the formula into a power-train dictated championship.
"It is much like squeezing a balloon. You don't want to squeeze one end of it only to find that all the air is simply shooting to another position."
When the framework for the current RRA was agreed at last year's Singapore Grand Prix it was hailed as a major breakthrough for the teams - because there had been a danger of the cost plans falling apart.
If no agreement is reached on the current deal, then teams will in theory have to revert to operating under the original RRA - which ran from 2010 through 2012.
Speaking about the deal that was agreed in Singapore, FOTA chairman Martin Whitmarsh said last year: "I think it was a good step forward in terms of trying to manage the resources in F1 and trying to create stability, and an improvement on that approach."
Further meetings of FOTA's leading members will be held before the start of the season to try and gain a consensus and get the new RRA into place.
FOTA secretary general Simone Perillo declined to comment on the state of negotiations regarding the RRA, but told AUTOSPORT he was "confident an agreement will be reached."
Private teams like Red Bull or Williams obviously have different visions about the right way to spend their development money.Stefano Domenicali wrote:German language source
Aerodynamics is much too dominating in F1. Many things are irrelevant for the automotive industry. On the other hand our mechanical developments are wasting away. Today aero takes 80% of developments compared to mechanical. We need to bring that ratio back to 50:50.
The way I read this conflict Horner wants the power train to take a lot less resources than the 50% that Ferrari think appropriate. This question is not only about the money spend but also about the chances that as manufacturer runs away with a big competitive advantage. So the privateers have lobbied for as much restrictions in the technical spec as in the way of budgets for the power train. The ban on turbo compounding in 2013, the fixing of the L4 configuration, the fixing of displacement, bore and rpm are all a result of that thinking. It reduces the options of manufacturers to come up with something quite radical in 2013 that would decide the championship on its own. By splitting the innovation to several tranches the other teams can catch up on a yearly basis and no manufacturers team can pull away too far. At least this is the thinking I can see behind Christian Horner's words. He is basically protecting the supremacy of the chassis aerodynamicists in F1 because Red Bull are currently running the best aero department in the business.Christian Horner wrote:Source
We are all in favour of containing costs moving forward, and the RRA is a good way of achieving that - as long as it is consistent, fair, equitable and transparent across all the activities of all the teams. We don't want to turn the formula into a power-train dictated championship. It is much like squeezing a balloon. You don't want to squeeze one end of it only to find that all the air is simply shooting to another position.
xpensive wrote:Again, a headcount limit of an F1 team's employees will never happen, for the simple reason that everybody involved knows that it would be completely useless as well as unenforceable.
Clocking people going in and out of a team's premises would possibly been of value in the 60s or 70s, when you designed and manufactured every bolt and nut yourself, but today it would be simply stupid.
This concept was probably dreamed up by someone with --- for engineering xperience, like MrM or one from F1T perhaps.
WhiteBlue wrote:I was thinking about Christian Horner's statement when I became aware that there are conflicting forces in F1 with regard to the question how money should be spend on different fields. All parties are in agreement that a repeat of the cost race as seen from the end of the '90s to 2006 should not happen again. On the other hand manufacturer teams demand that drive train development gets a significantly bigger slice of the limited development budget than it had in the years of the engine freeze.
Private teams like Red Bull or Williams obviously have different visions about the right way to spend their development money.Stefano Domenicali wrote:German language source
Aerodynamics is much too dominating in F1. Many things are irrelevant for the automotive industry. On the other hand our mechanical developments are wasting away. Today aero takes 80% of developments compared to mechanical. We need to bring that ratio back to 50:50.
The way I read this conflict Horner wants the power train to take a lot less resources than the 50% that Ferrari think appropriate. This question is not only about the money spend but also about the chances that as manufacturer runs away with a big competitive advantage. So the privateers have lobbied for as much restrictions in the technical spec as in the way of budgets for the power train. The ban on turbo compounding in 2013, the fixing of the L4 configuration, the fixing of displacement, bore and rpm are all a result of that thinking. It reduces the options of manufacturers to come up with something quite radical in 2013 that would decide the championship on its own. By splitting the innovation to several tranches the other teams can catch up on a yearly basis and no manufacturers team can pull away too far. At least this is the thinking I can see behind Christian Horner's words. He is basically protecting the supremacy of the chassis aerodynamicists in F1 because Red Bull are currently running the best aero department in the business.Christian Horner wrote:Source
We are all in favour of containing costs moving forward, and the RRA is a good way of achieving that - as long as it is consistent, fair, equitable and transparent across all the activities of all the teams. We don't want to turn the formula into a power-train dictated championship. It is much like squeezing a balloon. You don't want to squeeze one end of it only to find that all the air is simply shooting to another position.
I wonder how other users here think about this conflict between automotive teams and private teams. I can see some merits in both positions and I hope that the 2013 rules and the extended RRA will be a sensible compromise. I hate it when F1 is only about aero and no propulsion technology. On the other hand I think that manufacturers should not have an easy job of walking away with it. If the ICE is relatively cheap and competitive units can be purchased from Cosworth top teams should be able to design their own KERS and TERS systems to gain a competitive advantage. If that keeps six teams in contention for the championship I would think that the balance is right.
You are quite alone in that opinion. At least nobody in the paddock denies that a strict cost management is absolutely necessary for F1 to survive. The sponsorship market has dried up and only four out of twelve teams can make their budgets while from Renault downwards all teams including Williams have to rely on pay drivers to bring in sponsorship.andrew wrote:To my thinking, both a budget cap and the resource restriction are both just really bad ideas. I just can't see how you can have a series that is supposedly the pinicle of motorsport and boasts about showcasing the finest racing technology but and a bargin basement price.
