FOTA starts a breakaway series

[jamsbong]

I think there is still many questions unanswered. Why FOTA really want to spend an uncapped amount of money? does not make sense actually. I think this is an opportunity for FOTA to gain more control of F1, which I think is the real deal here. Both side are having a real power struggle.

To think that Max and Bernie are bad guys where as FOTA are heroes is unrealistic, there are no good guys in politics. Just a constant struggle to gain more control.

On the other hand, I'll just follow where ever Ferrari goes. hehe... I'm a fan.

[paused]

@adartop

Actually, the one thing that this year has done is highlighted just how important it is to start with a good baseline, with few fundamental flaws. If you look at both BMW & McLaren in Australia, there race performance was not too bad (4th on the Road for Lewis and should have been 2nd for Kubica).

In my mind those chasssis were probably as good as they were going to get and clearing don't have the scope to improve much relative to the rest. So far the only relative flaws of the Brawn and RBR are low ambient temp (brawn) and very slow corners (RBR but they seem to have improved this with current step).

These limitations seem to be manageable whereas the others just have a complete lack of grip in multiple scenarios (oversteer, understeer, sensitive to heat etc). So in their cases there is not an area that can be isolated and improved upon.

Tge biggest statment of that is problem the McLaren flowvis which just screems we are not really sure!

[CHT]

I think there is still many questions unanswered. Why FOTA really want to spend an uncapped amount of money? does not make sense actually. I think this is an opportunity for FOTA to gain more control of F1, which I think is the real deal here. Both side are having a real power struggle.

To think that Max and Bernie are bad guys where as FOTA are heroes is unrealistic, there are no good guys in politics. Just a constant struggle to gain more control.

On the other hand, I'll just follow where ever Ferrari goes. hehe... I'm a fan.

The reason why they feel they can afford to spend more is because if they run a series without Bernie, they will all be profitable, fans will get cheaper tickets and races will be broadcast to a bigger audience. plus they will not have to go through all the constant FIA rule changes and flip flop which end up costing the teams more money.

[CHT]

Ferrari alone isnt ---, we are basically watching F1 without Ferrari this year, they went the the first 3 races without scoring a point. The strength in FOTA lies in the combonation of those 8 teams, the drivers and all their collective sponsors.

We can feel the excitement now because smaller teams are beating ferrari. The same thrill will not happen when Ferrari is missing.

[KiwiF1]

Ferrari alone isnt ---, we are basically watching F1 without Ferrari this year, they went the the first 3 races without scoring a point.

Watching JB winning 6 out of 8 races might be enough to keep you interested but trust me, for me and a few hundred million other F1 fans half the joy of watching F1 these days is to see Ferrari chasing the Brawns, RBRs and Toyotas and - hopefully - eventually catching them and challenging for victories again. I reckon we're halfway there, and will most likely be at least 3rd on the WCC come the end of the year.

Now, if only McLaren and BMW managed to keep up to Ferrari's pace of improvement, that would make for a much more interesting championship overall..

Exactly, i think youll find that whilst ferrari may be at the back they still get far more support than any other team on the grid. And i for one do not turn on to watch brawn win, i turn on in the hopes of watching ferrari claw back to the top. As the guy above said, the only reason brawn winning is exciting is because they are beating Ferrari (and McLaren). If ferrari wernt there the value of brawns wins would take a nose dive.

The second sentance is correct, however ferrari are the keystone. If ferrari signed, FOTA would collapse and follow suit.

[gibells]

Question. Do CVC have the power to lose Bernsie if they see the value their investment diminishing exponentially? After all, isn't it them who own the Formula 1 branding (having bought if from Bernsie)?

[WhiteBlue]

CVC are the majority owner. Bernie retains a small equity share supposedly and there are some shares by past owners which are owned by banks. It is clear that CVC has the control. The important point is that the business is highly leveraged by huge debts. Those schemes only work when there is reasonable safety for future profits that enable payment of interest and reduction of debt. If Bernie decides to give half the profit away (which is probably a minimum of what the FOTA wants) FOA/FOM would immediately loose the securities to most of their debt and go bust.

Of course FOTA are aware of this and the only logical step from their side is to negotiate from this position of strength. They have Bernie more by the bollocks than they have Max Mosley. Thats why Bernie is probably telling Max to stuff it. FOTA have several options. They can push FOA/FOM into receivership and take over the commercial rights for pocket change or use that stick to get concessions and equity transfer. The logical thing that would make it cheap for them is to let FOA/FOM fail and leave the banks saddled with the bad debts.

[donskar]

Ferrari alone isnt ---, we are basically watching F1 without Ferrari this year, they went the the first 3 races without scoring a point. The strength in FOTA lies in the combonation of those 8 teams, the drivers and all their collective sponsors.

I love Ferrari, but agree completely. The strength is in the group of teams working together and sticking together. I can see FOTA staying in "FIA F1" next year, but under a set of rules they devise and agree to.

[Chaparral]

In light of everything that is going on with FOTA and FIA/FOM I found this very amusing hope you all do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO8TLBn7z1k

[donskar]

F1 gets little press here in Houston, but I saw a VERY small piece asserting that the FIA has announced that any FOTA series will be regulated by the FIA.??? Any comments on that.

Love the way Flavio pulled Max's sting after Max attacked him personally (from Autosport.com):

When asked about comments from Mosley that he was a 'loony' Briatore responded: "I don't want to personally describe what Max is because in his private life we have already had a demonstration of what he was in the News of the World.

. . .

"It's enough. If there is somebody who needs to be very quiet in their personal life, it's him because for sure he is not a [good] example, to be president with what he has in his personal life.

[djos]

In light of everything that is going on with FOTA and FIA/FOM I found this very amusing hope you all do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO8TLBn7z1k

=D> Classic!!!

[WhiteBlue]

F1 gets little press here in Houston, but I saw a VERY small piece asserting that the FIA has announced that any FOTA series will be regulated by the FIA.??? Any comments on that.

That will be regulation on the level as NASCAR or Indycar. They are recognized as the global autoracing regulatory body. The position of strength in F1 stems from ownership. When FIA don't own a series their influence tends to be minor. The local organizations have considerable freedom to do as they please.

Q&A with Ross Brawn at Autosport http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/76418

Q. Do you need a body to regulate the FOTA series?

RB: You would need a regulatory body. In fact ironically I think the agreement with the European Commission is that the FIA have to offer to do that to any competitive series that wants to set up, so the FIA have to offer to be at least the regulatory body. They may not be the body that sets the rules, they can be determined by some other mechanism. But if you want, the FIA can run the series for you. They can provide the stewards, the scrutineers and things of that nature. So that's available if FOTA wanted to take it up.

Q. Would you want them to oversee it?

RB: I think it is too early to get into the details at the moment.

As Joe Saward mentioned in his blog there is also the option for the FIA to split and the former opposing clubs (AAA, ADAC et al.) to form their own organization.

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2009/06/ ... -to-paris/

[WhiteBlue]

....

http://www.sid.de/index.php

21. March: Mexico City
11. April: Jerez, Spain
25. April: Portimao, Portugal
2. Maj: Imola, Italy
23. Maj: Monte Carlo
6. June: Montreal, Canada
13. July: Indianapolis, USA
25. July: Magny-Cours, France
15. August: Eurospeedway Lausitz, Germany
29. August: Helsinki, Finland
12. September: Monza, Italy
26. September: Abu Dahbi, UAE
10. October: Singapore
7. November: Adelaide, Australia
...

Just a little observation on that putative calendar. I don't like to see only 14 races. I don't like shorter races either. So one hopes that the next iteration will be a bit fleshier and that FOTA will not shorten GP race distance.

[outer_bongolia]

I think there is still many questions unanswered. Why FOTA really want to spend an uncapped amount of money? does not make sense actually. I think this is an opportunity for FOTA to gain more control of F1, which I think is the real deal here. Both side are having a real power struggle.

To think that Max and Bernie are bad guys where as FOTA are heroes is unrealistic, there are no good guys in politics. Just a constant struggle to gain more control.

On the other hand, I'll just follow where ever Ferrari goes. hehe... I'm a fan.

Well, think of the teams which have 400-600 employees. Their paychecks (+ all additional expenses for them) would take a major portion of the budgeted money. So, the only option would be a massive lay off. It is not that easy to cut your headcount to a third of what it was.

And this is just one part of the budget cap issue. If Mosley was so worried about the money that they are spending, they could have allowed customer cars and that would have solved the problem.

The other thing is the budget cap was being forced because teams were going to want more money from CVC/FOM with the next Concorde agreement. With the budget cap, there would be no reason to give the teams any extra money.

I agree with your assertion that the whole struggle is to gain more power, and the teams need to have some power to protect themselves against two entities. One that takes all their money, and the other changes regulations every year basically forcing them to spend more money than they can afford.

FIA/FOM should have stepped back a little and obeyed the rule of "laissez faire, laissez passer"..

[mcdenife]

This is quite interesting. And this, enjoy