About the F1 Resource Restriction Agreement

[donskar]

A question for all: how is the budget cap supposed to deal with capital/equipment expenditures not directly linked to any specific car or season? I ask after re-reading this piece about Ferrari's new simulator (installed just before Christmas, way behind McL):

The Ferrari simulator, built with the technical support of Moog, consists of an aluminium and composite structure in which are fitted the cockpit and the equipment which produces the images and sound. The platform weighs around two tonnes and is fitted with electronically controlled actuators that way around half a tonne each. The whole structure is fitted on a specially designed and built base, weighing two hundred tons. The whole is controlled by ten multiprocessor calculators with a total memory of over 60 GB of RAM: the amount of data that can be produced is around 5GB per day. It features a Dolby Surround 7.1 sound system, putting out 3500 W. The installation required over ten kilometres of cabling and power output is around 130 kW. The simulator is housed in a building measuring around 180 square metres, on two floors, which includes the control room. The platform covers a surface area of around eight metres wide by the same length and is six metres high. The driver is installed in front of five displays, which give a total viewing angle in excess of 180°.

I assume this cost at least several million $. Is there no cap on such investments?

[donskar]

Apologies if this post does not quite fit here -- I think so (from GrandPrix.com:

Domenicali was also present at the event and said that Ferrari is very keen to get a race in America, would like to see KERS reintroduced into F1 in 2011, and that the team is now being funded without any money at all from its parent company. He says that the team will not stand in the way of Fisichella is he can find a race seat in F1 this year and admits that it is going to be a big challenge for Ferrari to reduce the number of staff at the agreed levels by the end of 2011. The team currently employs around 850 people and will need to reduce this considerably, although it has dispensations because it builds both chassis and engines.

I wonder about that dispensation, though it seems sensible that there be some allowance made.

[WhiteBlue]

A question for all: how is the budget cap supposed to deal with capital/equipment expenditures not directly linked to any specific car or season? I ask after re-reading this piece about Ferrari's new simulator (installed just before Christmas, way behind McL):

The Ferrari simulator, built with the technical support of Moog, consists of an aluminium and composite structure in which are fitted the cockpit and the equipment which produces the images and sound. The platform weighs around two tonnes and is fitted with electronically controlled actuators that way around half a tonne each. The whole structure is fitted on a specially designed and built base, weighing two hundred tons. The whole is controlled by ten multiprocessor calculators with a total memory of over 60 GB of RAM: the amount of data that can be produced is around 5GB per day. It features a Dolby Surround 7.1 sound system, putting out 3500 W. The installation required over ten kilometres of cabling and power output is around 130 kW. The simulator is housed in a building measuring around 180 square metres, on two floors, which includes the control room. The platform covers a surface area of around eight metres wide by the same length and is six metres high. The driver is installed in front of five displays, which give a total viewing angle in excess of 180°.

I assume this cost at least several million $. Is there no cap on such investments?

It would not make so much sense to set CapEx limits unless you want to track budget instead of resources. But we simply do not know.

[WhiteBlue]

Apologies if this post does not quite fit here -- I think so (from GrandPrix.com:

Domenicali was also present at the event and said that Ferrari is very keen to get a race in America, would like to see KERS reintroduced into F1 in 2011, and that the team is now being funded without any money at all from its parent company. He says that the team will not stand in the way of Fisichella is he can find a race seat in F1 this year and admits that it is going to be a big challenge for Ferrari to reduce the number of staff at the agreed levels by the end of 2011. The team currently employs around 850 people and will need to reduce this considerably, although it has dispensations because it builds both chassis and engines.

I wonder about that dispensation, though it seems sensible that there be some allowance made.

Logic dictates that resources for engine and chassis are dealt with separately. The chassis limit seems to be well under 300 and the engine limit must be considerably lower in the order of 50 perhaps. It would make sense to adjust that depending of the future engine rules. If engines remain frozen the figure can be low. If engines go to a new formula the number must go up considerably.

[ISLAMATRON]

Ferrari is pro KERS now? Strange

[WhiteBlue]

Ferrari is pro KERS now? Strange

As part of a carefully designed engine package that will be specified to FOTA wishes.

[WhiteBlue]

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2010/01/r ... n-drivers/

It had been intended to restrict the number of developments allowed on the cars in 2010, but this was not agreed in the end and so it will be restricted only by spend, under the resource restriction agreement. Each team will handle this differently, but certainly many teams have allocated budget in order to have something new on the car at every race. So there is a premium on experienced drivers.

So now we see the glorious FOTA plan of a restricted number of homologated aero developments fail. It is painfully obvious that a budget cap would have been the right thing to do.

[ISLAMATRON]

Ferrari is pro KERS now? Strange

As part of a carefully designed engine package that will be specified to FOTA wishes.

Yeah but it says in 2011, the new engine regs wont come in until 2013.

[WhiteBlue]

Ferrari is pro KERS now? Strange

As part of a carefully designed engine package that will be specified to FOTA wishes.

Yeah but it says in 2011, the new engine regs wont come in until 2013.

But they will have the chance to do something on the engines to adapt it to KERS and that will get them out of the hole they are in this year.

[ISLAMATRON]

quite possibly

[WhiteBlue]

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528, ... 27,00.html?

Speaking during a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Phone-In ahead of this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix, Lowe said: "The teams agreed a contract which is called the 'Resource Restriction Agreement'. That does ramp in a set of caps: we've got the wind tunnel and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) caps which we've been running for well over a year now and we've got external expenditure and headcount caps. The caps have a glide path so they ramp in over last year, this year and next year.

Here we get a more structured description of the resource cap. I wish the teams would be more open with the facts. At least the sceptics should by now be convinced that the head count cap really exists.

[xpensive]

Yes of course, the teams will work in a leak-proof environment, everybody will check in and out on time and the FIA will record the time sheets. Moreover, every subcontractor will have to open their books to the FIA and the amount of carbon-fibre delivered will be carefully weighed. And absolutely, the internet connection between the ex Honda plant and Germany will be blocked.

Snap out of it, this is the real world.

[WhiteBlue]

The kind of resource restriction agreement that Lowe is speaking off appears very sensible to me. If teams start to cheat it will give the team management huge head aches. There is so much fluctuation of personnel between teams that cheating will get out very quickly. The resource restriction pact is a fact and I bet it will work. Ron Dennis created the whistle blower culture with the Ferrari floor scandal and Max Mosley perfected it with the driver indemnities for Alonso, Hamilton and Piquet. It will be very risky indeed for anybody to cheat with resources.

[donskar]

The kind of resource restriction agreement that Lowe is speaking off appears very sensible to me. If teams start to cheat it will give the team management huge head aches. There is so much fluctuation of personnel between teams that cheating will get out very quickly. The resource restriction pact is a fact and I bet it will work. Ron Dennis created the whistle blower culture with the Ferrari floor scandal and Max Mosley perfected it with the driver indemnities for Alonso, Hamilton and Piquet. It will be very risky indeed for anybody to cheat with resources.

Cheating will go on -- F1 is too competitive and high stakes for it not to take place. BUT the overall cost of F1 will go down. The issue (in my mind)is value for money. What will the new "cheap" F1 look like to spectators? IndyCar racing might begin to look better and better.

[WhiteBlue]

... the overall cost of F1 will go down. The issue (in my mind)is value for money. What will the new "cheap" F1 look like to spectators?

Richards on cost saving and ethos in F1:

The initial signs are very attractive and represent the basis for a real revolution in the sport. They hold the promise to return Formula One to its fundamental ethos, where success comes to those with the most ingenious engineering and best organisation, not simply those with the biggest budget.

Lowe seems to support this in his Autosport interview by aiming for efficiency in engineering:

Although it may not appear things have changed, they have, and it will get tougher over the next 12 months. In some ways it is good that some people haven't noticed the change, because we still need to put on a show and it's not good for that if there is suddenly a perception that we've turned into dinosaurs technologically. I would hope we can still continue by being more efficient, and we're finding greater efficiency all the time. Things are changing behind the scenes, and people not being able to spot it is probably a good thing.

This would be in line with predictions that budget or resource cuts will not fundamentally change F1 as the pinnacle of motor racing if they are done in the right way. I tend to support Richards' position that technical superiority on equal or similar resources has greater value and represents more closely the ethos of the golden days of F1.