Max says Ferrari and Montezemolo crap

[timbo]

Oh, have to note that my previous post was a reply to Giblet's.

[WhiteBlue]

Actually I see it differently. Max encouraged and enthused about the manufacturers first getting involved, even telling Frank Williams that he was stupid not to sell out.

Towards the end of his tenure he constantly bickered and engaged in political warfare with the manufacturers effectively driving them out of F1. Let us not forget that BMW quit after the resource restriction agreement was put in place and saying that it wasn't the money.

It was also never about the money. McLaren and Ferrari both had huge budgets, among the biggest, but both also always spent within their means. McLaren in particular were known for making a profit pretty much every year until their ridiculous FIA fine. Other teams weren't always as diligent, with Toyota in particular throwing good money after bad to an amazing extent, but that is surely the fault of the teams and not something a sporting body should be getting involved in.

To Max the budget cap was all about the politics and reducing or removing the influence of the manufacturers, and with them the threat to his authority and the threat of the teams being able to fund a breakaway series. He set about making F1 unattractive to the manufacturers and instead sought to replace them with teams like USF1.

In a sport a budget cap is akin to placing ballast on successful cars, it's an unnecessary and artificial handicap. You wouldn't see the Olympics restricting richer countries spending on training centres for their athletes so that, for example, a runner from a poor country wasn't disadvantaged, just as you wouldn't see the top tennis players having to carry ballast in their pockets. If the teams have the resources let them use them. F1 shouldn't be about who has the cleverest accountants, it should be about who uses their available resources to their best advantage within the given set of rules.

So Max did some good through the safety initiatives, although even here the credit must be shared with others like Jackie Stewart, he ushered in the manufacturer age which I think was to the benefit of the sport overall, but then he threatened to tear the sport apart with his power struggle for powers sake. His lies and poison towards the end of his presidency were really making his position untenable, and as much as I dreaded Todt taking over thus far at least he has been doing a much better job. It's early days but we have yet to have a major row, the stewards appear to be taking a softer approach which has lead to improved on track action, and those manufacturers that did stay appear to be here for the long term now that things have calmed down.

The typical blinkered view that can be expected by a Mosley hater. Mosley knew very well that new teams were necessary for F1 and he tried very hard to get them for many years. He even tried for some years to get new teams in the way the leading teams wanted them established until Williams put up a fight for the constructor status.

It is a fairy tale that Mosley worked against the manufacturers. He generally had a very good relationship with the boards of manufacturers and found a lot of common ground regarding road relevance and fuel efficiency with them. There was a period of confrontation with the self styled GPMA led by Ron Dennis when they tried a first break away in 2005. Typically GPMA wasn't led by real manufacturer personalities but by team F1 managers of the richest teams in that time. It simply was an instrument for the rich team managers to increase their power and perpetuate their dominance. Naturally Mosley didn't simply fall over and let them all have it their way.

To say that BMW left F1 because of Mosley is a complete fabrication. BMW had a huge cost cutting program and F1 came up as any other item on the agenda. Due to lack of success the cost was not justified and BMW decided to pull out of F1 and support other motor sport activities as they had in the past. The lack of road relevance and fuel efficiency in F1 was a factor they mentioned in the last press conference. BMW had fought for the development of KERS and FOTA had just killed that for 2010. BMW had also supported and pushed the idea of a down sized regeneration integrated engine which was put on the back burner last year due to cost constraints.

The reduction of the F1 spending down to early 90ties level was something the broad majority of the teams supported. That is the reason the RRA was eventually completed. The switch to resources rather than money and the sliding proposal was done in May and was a proposal by Mercedes that was accepted by the FiA. The only team that wasn't prepared to sign that RRA was Ferrari. They eventually did it when it became clear that they had no support in FOTA once their scare crow (Mosley) was removed from the game. The RRA clearly shows that F1 cannot work with unlimited resources for the rich and powerful teams. Left to their own negotiations the teams had no alternative but to implement the Mercedes plan. It simply shows that Max Mosley was right from the begin. F1 needs to be affordable for real independent competitors and this can only be achieved by a set of restricted resources. F1 does not need third cars of the rich teams and sterility.

The real question is: Is the level of RRA low enough to make the new teams viable and attract enough new players to the sport? The answer to this question will only be available over time. My impression is that Mosley was again right by asking tighter restrictions and a faster implementation. The fact that an organization like Prodrive see no point in competing under current RRA conditions is indicative that Mosley's proposal has been diluted too much to have a real chance to work.

So let reality be the judge who was right in the 2009 cost cutting conflict between Mosley and Montezemolo. To me it looks like Mr. Mosley was pretty much spot on what was needed to save F1.

[timbo]

He even tried for some years to get new teams in the way the leading teams wanted them established until Williams put up a fight for the constructor status.

How does 30+ million euro deposit required from new team to enter F1 fit into this?

[WhiteBlue]

The deposit was a reaction to fraudsters in the late 90ties like Walkingshaw with Arrows. They damaged the reputation of F1 and did much harm to the industries suppliers. The deposit was applied for some years when there were full grids and the money was payed back over the season. Later when the grid became more bare the deposit was waived.

[timbo]

The deposit was applied for some years when there were full grids and the money was payed back over the season.

As long as I can remember F1 never had full grid (24 cars previously) for quite a while. Yet the deposit was still required.
If they really considered preventing fraudsters from F1, how come they selected USF1?

[Steven]

It's a shame people can't see past the sensational headlines over the last couple of years.

You understand that F1 is largely still around at all right now because of his insight?

He started the ball rolling with the concept of budget caps before the world market tanked. When car companies will still running their budgets based on record profits, he could see it was unsustainable. He was one of the few smart enough to see the world market could tank anytime.

They laughed at him, then Honda, Toyota, and BMW in rapid succession ran away. Too expensive, for some of the biggest names in the world. Incredible the teams thought this could keep going, and they needed to be sobered. Mosley knew the breakaway would never happen, he had run a breakaway series before in F1, even hosting a couple of races, and spoke from experience.

Imagine the job it has to be to wrangle all the egos in F1, Luca included, to try to reduce costs. I can see few people, after reading many articles and editorials over the years, capable of doing what he did.

Keep in mind that being the head of the FIA is not just about F1. There is lots I despise about Mosley, but there are few in thee world that could do the job he does.

You read what I wrote about the FIAT CEO calling his own Chairman a Bella Figura? That's not high praise.

Giblet, there is a whole lot more than headlines available not to be happy about Mosley's ruling in the past 16 years. His outlash at Di Montezemolo just shows his frustration of things that he didn't manage to realise. Mosley would've liked the teams to listen to him always, instead of having their say too.

As for safety I can agree with you. Pretty much all sports have become safer, and they wouldn't have without better rule setting. Engineers are only adapting to the rules, they are not making cars safer because they want to, they only make them faster.

Then back to Mosley, his cost cutting initiatives in 2008 were pretty much his swansong. I believe at that time he still left the door open to run for another term as president.

Before that however, things went seriously wrong, there is no point in denying it. Rule changes were introduced every single year to fix small things here or there. Most interesting here is that only the 2009 reg changes were actually tested and analysed in real life.

Then there are the stewards. Since I can remember there has been talk about penalties in and after F1 races. For some reason Mosley failed to address that, while this year under Todt there is suddenly nothing but praise (and rightly so).

At least for F1, it's not too difficult to do a better job than Mosley did.

[lebesset]

have to agree with tomba
the previous guy was power mad as well
could it be that todt isn't going to be corrupted as well ?
one lives in hope

[autogyro]

have to agree with tomba
the previous guy was power mad as well
could it be that todt isn't going to be corrupted as well ?
one lives in hope

I cannot understand how you can come to this conclusion. Jean Todt is a brilliant organiser but there has been little sign of him doing anything in F1 as yet.
Just because the regulations in regard to drivers conduct has been relaxed and other drivers brought in, does not mean things are better by any measure.
True Fotas wings have been well and truely clipped and some of the truth behind it revealed and this has effectively silenced the trouble makers but that is all up to now.

[lebesset]

that is the whole point !
todt hasn't come in and done anything precipitate , in my view an excellent thing

so far the approach has been softly , softly .. a little fine tuning

my big fear was that todt would come in and continue the previous adversarial approach , concensus is what is needed !

[timbo]

Jean Todt is a brilliant organiser but there has been little sign of him doing anything in F1 as yet.

He go rid of Donnelly. A true sign of improvement to me.

[autogyro]

Not doing anything precipitate and not doing anything are much the same policy.
It is when the new engine regs and next years changes to the regs become common knowledge when the sh-- will hit the fan.
There is still nobody nominated to head FIA F1 yet, so we shall see.
You are all living in a false dawn at the moment.

[timbo]

False or not, it still looks like dawn.
And it's half-a-year without "put-your-name"-gate!

[myurr]

The typical blinkered view that can be expected by a Mosley hater.

So much for attack the post not the poster.

Mosley knew very well that new teams were necessary for F1 and he tried very hard to get them for many years. He even tried for some years to get new teams in the way the leading teams wanted them established until Williams put up a fight for the constructor status.

It is a fairy tale that Mosley worked against the manufacturers. He generally had a very good relationship with the boards of manufacturers and found a lot of common ground regarding road relevance and fuel efficiency with them. There was a period of confrontation with the self styled GPMA led by Ron Dennis when they tried a first break away in 2005. Typically GPMA wasn't led by real manufacturer personalities but by team F1 managers of the richest teams in that time. It simply was an instrument for the rich team managers to increase their power and perpetuate their dominance. Naturally Mosley didn't simply fall over and let them all have it their way.

To say that BMW left F1 because of Mosley is a complete fabrication. BMW had a huge cost cutting program and F1 came up as any other item on the agenda. Due to lack of success the cost was not justified and BMW decided to pull out of F1 and support other motor sport activities as they had in the past. The lack of road relevance and fuel efficiency in F1 was a factor they mentioned in the last press conference. BMW had fought for the development of KERS and FOTA had just killed that for 2010. BMW had also supported and pushed the idea of a down sized regeneration integrated engine which was put on the back burner last year due to cost constraints.

The reduction of the F1 spending down to early 90ties level was something the broad majority of the teams supported. That is the reason the RRA was eventually completed. The switch to resources rather than money and the sliding proposal was done in May and was a proposal by Mercedes that was accepted by the FiA. The only team that wasn't prepared to sign that RRA was Ferrari. They eventually did it when it became clear that they had no support in FOTA once their scare crow (Mosley) was removed from the game. The RRA clearly shows that F1 cannot work with unlimited resources for the rich and powerful teams. Left to their own negotiations the teams had no alternative but to implement the Mercedes plan. It simply shows that Max Mosley was right from the begin. F1 needs to be affordable for real independent competitors and this can only be achieved by a set of restricted resources. F1 does not need third cars of the rich teams and sterility.

The real question is: Is the level of RRA low enough to make the new teams viable and attract enough new players to the sport? The answer to this question will only be available over time. My impression is that Mosley was again right by asking tighter restrictions and a faster implementation. The fact that an organization like Prodrive see no point in competing under current RRA conditions is indicative that Mosley's proposal has been diluted too much to have a real chance to work.

So let reality be the judge who was right in the 2009 cost cutting conflict between Mosley and Montezemolo. To me it looks like Mr. Mosley was pretty much spot on what was needed to save F1.

There are clearly two ways of looking at this: Mosley was visionary, made predictions, took steps to remedy the issues, and we're seeing the fruit of that now.

The alternative way to look at it is that: Mosley caused a load of problems, came up with an end goal that removed his political opponents from the sport, predicted that outcome, and then set about making it happen.

To me Mosley is like Gordon Brown. Gordon sees himself as the savior of the world, and that his policies saved the UK from a worse recession. Others, like myself, see Brown as one of the causes of the recession in the first place, and that the economy is recovering *despite* his policies and not because of them.

I know you're a long time fan of Mosley and that you have defended him numerous times in the past, so I'm not going to persuade you to see things from my perspective, but equally I refuse to overlook the years of manipulation, politics, leaks, meddling, lies, and frankly corruption that became the core of Mosley's FIA presidency. Thankfully Todt's hand's off approach seems to have so far benefited F1 no end. I hope he continues in his current vein.

[autogyro]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I do not agree with Max Mosley on all the decisions made under his presidency.
However, I do get annoyed when posters insult him without stating any details of the issues they use to attack him.
In almost all cases, the issue in question is highly complex and a great deal of the reasoning is not in the public arena. On further investigation it is found that the insults are unjustified. Even so, no apology is ever given.
IMO there is nobody as qualified or as experienced as Max Mosley to run F1.
Even Jean Todt has been unable to fill this post up until now.
That need will soon become essential.

[Giblet]

It's a shame people can't see past the sensational headlines over the last couple of years.

You understand that F1 is largely still around at all right now because of his insight?

He started the ball rolling with the concept of budget caps before the world market tanked. When car companies will still running their budgets based on record profits, he could see it was unsustainable. He was one of the few smart enough to see the world market could tank anytime.

They laughed at him, then Honda, Toyota, and BMW in rapid succession ran away. Too expensive, for some of the biggest names in the world. Incredible the teams thought this could keep going, and they needed to be sobered. Mosley knew the breakaway would never happen, he had run a breakaway series before in F1, even hosting a couple of races, and spoke from experience.

Imagine the job it has to be to wrangle all the egos in F1, Luca included, to try to reduce costs. I can see few people, after reading many articles and editorials over the years, capable of doing what he did.

Keep in mind that being the head of the FIA is not just about F1. There is lots I despise about Mosley, but there are few in thee world that could do the job he does.

You read what I wrote about the FIAT CEO calling his own Chairman a Bella Figura? That's not high praise.

Giblet, there is a whole lot more than headlines available not to be happy about Mosley's ruling in the past 16 years. His outlash at Di Montezemolo just shows his frustration of things that he didn't manage to realise. Mosley would've liked the teams to listen to him always, instead of having their say too.

As for safety I can agree with you. Pretty much all sports have become safer, and they wouldn't have without better rule setting. Engineers are only adapting to the rules, they are not making cars safer because they want to, they only make them faster.

Then back to Mosley, his cost cutting initiatives in 2008 were pretty much his swansong. I believe at that time he still left the door open to run for another term as president.

Before that however, things went seriously wrong, there is no point in denying it. Rule changes were introduced every single year to fix small things here or there. Most interesting here is that only the 2009 reg changes were actually tested and analysed in real life.

Then there are the stewards. Since I can remember there has been talk about penalties in and after F1 races. For some reason Mosley failed to address that, while this year under Todt there is suddenly nothing but praise (and rightly so).

At least for F1, it's not too difficult to do a better job than Mosley did.

I have to mostly agree Tomba, but Todt just got here, and has not had to deal with the problems of scale that Mosley has had to as of yet. No gates, no deaths, no financial meltdown, no three huge teams (and former traditional engine suppliers) suddenly leaving the sport, no bringing in new teams under constant fire fire from every angle amongst 'the spenders'.

He was handed a relatively 'fixed' F1, for better or worse. He brought in a new stewards system, but people seem to be complaining about it. He understood that new teams needed to be here soon, as he could see the writing on the wall. Driver stewards letting drivers race. I think Todt is a good successor, and amazing manager of people and resource, but again, he has a lot to prove. So long as he doesn't get spanked by hookers, his image will be hard to tarnish for a while.

I feel as you that Todt will do a better job, but he still has to do that job, and he still needs to get a report card at the end of his first term.