FIA introduces £30m budget cap

[WhiteBlue]

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[xpensive]

I don't see "cyber-stalking" as the oddest thing to do, I have been close to ask our IT dep myself a couple of times what they could do to find out who was behind the most substance-free statements by obvious wannabees and web-trash.

But that was regarding other forums than F1Technical of course.

Besides, I am certain that Ciro...ooops!

[timbo]

In previous years you had to have aero downforce to get performance and that requires a ton of money for design, wind tunnel testing and on track testing. So no surprise that rich teams usually got that sorted much better than the back markers.

Grids were much separated in terms of pace before 1997 too.

[Chaparral]

Anyway you guys get back on topic and if Im axed well that’s life and its been nice knowing a number of you.


Cheers

Steve

[DaveKillens]

Bloody bloody shame. All of us, each and every one who reads or participates in this forum all have something in common. We are passionate about Formula One. It's a common bond, and should bring each of us a little bit closer. In fact, I mentioned to one person that I consider this forum as something like an extended family to me. Comrades, brothers-in-arms, fellow tech freaks, call it what you will, we share something very special. And by participating in this forum, exchanging tech info or opinions is what should bind us even closer.

And what adds the icing on the cake, what really makes this very unique is the fact that so many different people from all over the globe, of various nationalities and cultures can find something in common. We put the United Nations to shame in our harmony.

I cannot express how proud and happy I am in being honored by being able to participate in this forum. I cannot express how much pleasure it brings me to make contact with someone else from another part of the world, and exchange in dialogue.

Personally, I have no issues with anyone here. I do not want to see anyone leave in a huff, or be banned. For that, we would all lose, we would all be a bit poorer.

I learned a long time ago not to take forum comments personally. No one is perfect (my apologies Ciro j/k) and we all can make mistakes. So freaking what? Is it the end of the world is someone disagrees or proves me wrong? Hey, I can think of much worse things that could happen to me. And if someone takes offence, I regret that and am sorry. I didn't come here to get into nasty disagreements. I just ignore the source of the irritation. I learned to check my ego when I come in the door.

Waste your money and you're only out of money, but waste your time and you've lost a part of your life. ~Michael Leboeuf

[WhiteBlue]

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[Ciro Pabón]

Read this note before posting in this thread:

Any further comment about intentions or IP adresses of other members, instead of posts related to the subject of this thread will bring an automatic warning.

[donskar]

Timbo wrote:

If you make F1 a budget formula you would have guys like Andrea Moda and Life again. Is it good?
I don't think that enforcing a budget cap in the way we currently see is a good move. Note that not a single team currently competing have openly supported last FIA propositions

.

Agree. Large and varied grids are something I miss, but teams like those mentioned above (and more) did not add much more than belly laughs to the sport.

It seems to me that the budget limit is mainly:
1) A political move to weaken team unity
2) A way for Bernie to make more $
3) At best, ill considered and not the result of dialogue with the teams (though I do not know what takes place off stage)

Montezemolo made some reasonable statements (IMHO) about the reduced budget and in response he gets (in essence): "if you don't like it go away"

Max/Bernie's inability to engage in dialogue with the teams says a great deal. Remember "F1 does not need Honda"? F1 looks more and more to me like a group of very strong businessmen/corporations being dictated to by a couple of thugs.

Finally, let's remember, much of what we post is our opinion. The environment here would be much happier if we used more "I think," IHMO, "it looks like" and so on.

The only thing I'm 100% sure of is that we are all imperfect (except me, of course)

[WhiteBlue]

Donskar, we do not know how much discussions are taking place before the parties go into public confrontation. What I positively know is that Mosley has been concerned about the number of teams going out of business since Jordan, Minardi and Jaguar went under.

There have been countless initiatives to re-open competition which have pretty much all been stalled by the few influential teams that are defending their accumulated wealth as stepping stones to future competitiveness. Unless some of those objections are disregarded the FIA will never get F1 back to a more open and competitive formula.

So my impression is that ultimately without some force this issue will never be resolved. I think that Max Mosley wants F1 in good health and settled when he finally gives his presidency up. If he manages to implement the budget cap and keep the current teams he will probably call it a day.

Having said that he will be very worried about Bernie's activities with his successor necessarily quite green. We have seen last year that Max and Bernie are following very differnt objectives and they probably have hefty internal debates even in times of seemingly common objectives.

I do not see FOTA as the strength some people perceive in them. FOTA works for a short time as long as teams see a chance to gain advantages together. Realistically FOTA will always primarily pursue the interest of the big teams because they have wealth and power. There is very little chance in my view that FOTA can squeeze more money out of CVC. AS it stands they have to consider smaller hand outs with the crisis hitting FOMs revenues in the comming years as well.

So the next 4 weeks will be interesting and we may still see another round of compromises in the name of the common good of F1. What past experience has shown us is the ability of Mosley to stirr things up and make surprising deals in a crisis. Perhaps FOTA will come up with some ideas how the budget cap can be set without inhibiting the new entrants to committ. I have my doubts that Dave Richards will compete with Ferrari on equal terms on a 100 mil € budget.

[donskar]

WhiteBlue: well-reasoned post, but I often feel that you posts are so supportive of Max/Bernie that you almost paraphrase their position. I stress I refer to your posts, and not to you personally. I'd love to hear you reason out both sides of a position. There are always (at least!) two sides.

All of us have biases. My signature tries to point out that I see that Ferrari is, at best, a light grey rather than white or black -- but I am still biased toward Ferrari.

I am proud of most Montezemolo's statements over the past few weeks. He at least sounds like a reasonable, intelligent individual (from Autosport):

"All aspects of the new regulations should be carefully reviewed. Limiting, for the time being, my comments to the cost cap issue, as you know I have always been concerned about the introduction, mainly because I consider that there are serious technical difficulties in making sure that any cap can be realistically monitored.

"Additionally, any controversy on the actual respect of the cost cap would undermine the image of Formula 1 and could seriously damage any involved team.

"There are on the other hand doubts as to whether or not two categories of teams should be created which will inevitably mean that one category will have an advantage over the other and that the championship will be fundamentally unfair and, perhaps, even biased.

"In any event this would create confusion in the public's mind which would seriously lower the value of Formula 1. I do not think that this is appropriate knowing what Formula 1 represents for its players and for the public."

The Ferrari president also expressed concern about the timing and the way the rules have been introduced, as he believes there is "no extreme urgency" for the move.

Di Montezemolo also points out that, according to the Concorde Agreement, the FIA cannot pass any rules without the approval of the F1 commission.

Max's reply is insulting: "The sport could survive without Ferrari." And, typically, he characterizes a Montezemolo's position as "I want to go to war with the FIA." In other words, he does not dignify opposition with any real response at all.

In my opinion, Montezemolo's position is worthy of discussion. Yes, he looks out for Ferrari first, but Ferrari loses if F1 loses; it wins if F1 wins. Max (and Bernie), it seems to me, care only for their own personal power and wealth. I have no respect for either of them and I think F1 would be better served by more men like Montezemolo and Ron Dennis and fewer like Mosley and Ecclestone.

[machin]

If it works this could be great... creating wildly different cars on the grid... which will only add to the interest....

...however.... I still can't see how the FIA can stop sponsors giving "gifts" to teams... how will these gifts be costed?

....And surely this will promote "two team" teams like Red Bull/Torro Rosso... twice the money to develope one car????!

I really hope it works...

[WhiteBlue]

Donskar, I give it to Montezemolo that he has excellent marketing communication. He is also quite capable of ridiculous statements when it suits Ferrari. If I remember right he said that last years winning McLaren was only winning due to stolen ideas from Ferrari. Considering the investigation by the FIA and the subsequent design restrictions I find this a bit far fetched.

Mosley talks quite blund on this occasion:

"The sport could survive without Ferrari," Mosley told the Financial Times, although acknowledging the potential seriousness of the loss."It would be very, very sad to lose Ferrari. It is the Italian national team,"

F1 can ideed operate without Ferrari although it would be a very severe loss.

This is not necessarily an uncompromising position. The two men know each other and I'm sure efforts will be made to sort this out. The next step will be the common FOTA statement due next week. Lets see how that will go and if they can make a contribution towards solving the conflict. Mosley has already made two steps from excluding drivers, marketing and promotion from the cap and by raising the figure from 30 to 40 mil Sterling.

[Conceptual]

I hope that all of the teams buckle down and get on board the cap train. If we have 13 teams all operating at 40M (well, 40M + engine costs) we will see the true brilliance of the teams. Anyone can deliver with unlimited funds (not wins, but a car that finishes GP's). The Greatest teams can deliver with severly limited resources.

I still want to come back to something that I was shouted down for saying before, and that is the Player Killer addition to F1.

If the teams like Jordan, Minardi and other classic backmarker teams return to F1 with the cap, I believe that they could contribute immensly to the action and excitement on track be being the backmarker...

Player Killer F1:

Blue flags removed from GP (remain in quali).
Lead car has to pass lap traffic on merit, no free pass.
Lead car gets 1 point for every car lapped.
Lapped cars get black flagged.

What this would do is slow down the leader, and allow for more challenges for the lead. Also, it would still put a premium on leading the race, as the PK points would help greatly in the WDC over the course of the season. And it would give alot of TV time to the leader (where it belongs to be honest), and the cars they are about to "kill", thus giving sponsor exposure to the backmarkers as well as the leaders (instead of following the 5 way battle for 12th place for 20 laps and never seeing the "boring" leader who is 20 seconds ahead of 2nd place and getting the "free pass" on everyone he comes up against.)

Before you make your mind up about this, remember, if everyone adheres to the 40M budget, the field "should" be more level (althought it is pretty damn level right now!) so it would mostly be cars that pitted for repairs that get lapped.

If you can honestly run a simulation of how this would play out in your imagination, without bias, I think that you will see that instead of watching the dogs chase the rabbit, the rabbit becomes the biggest dog of them all, and fighting for first place will take on a whole new level of intensity.

For those that don't like the fact that cars will be forced out before the end of the race, banning refueling will bring enough of that on its own anyways, so it wouldn't really be that big of a deal anyways.

PS: I think that the cap should have been $65M instead of $40M just so the top level talent are still paid well enough to stick around. My biggest fear of the $40M cap is that the teams (and us) are going to lose ALOT of this talent to different opportunities that can still pay them top dollar.

The last thing that I want to see is a bunch of F3 teams rebranded as F1 constructors, simply because there is not enough in the budget to employ the talent necessary to maintain a cutting edge level of innovation and technology.

[Metar]

So if we end up with some old-school McLaren or Ferrari-style domination days, do you really want to see three finishers?


The leader is usually (excepting a repairs-pitstop by a faster car) faster than the ones he laps, and should be able to overtake the backmarkers anyway - yes, I'd like to see them have to fight their way through, just like the NASCARites have to, without blue flags - and building up a lead is a damn good incentive anyway, but to "kill" the other car off after that? Just look at a race as exciting as Silverstone 2008: Hamilton dominated it, but the rest of the drivers delivered some good racing too - but none of that would've existed, since all but the top three were out of the lead lap, and even then, Rubens was at some point lapped as well. Yeah, backmarkers, already not the best drivers or most experienced in a duel, would fight with teeth and claws - is that safe?

Also, remember Monaco 2008? In his desperate efforts to prevent his challenger from overtaking him, Nico Rosberg cut a chicane in order to allow Hamilton through, while preventing the also-lapped Button from overtaking. How in the lord's name do you expect the leader to overtake backmarkers at Monaco? Fisi, Bourdais, et all will make themselves as wide as possible - and at Monaco, that's easy enough.

It'll also mean a true "race over" for every top-car driver that has a damaged wing or similar. It would've meant a far more boring 2007 season - since Hamilton was lapped in Brazil, for example, and the McLarens were powerless to defend against the Ferraris at that track.

[nudger]

dont know if anyone has posted this quote from an interview with max, taken on 1st May. he was responding to ferraris right to veto

“We are saying we’re not interfering with this (Ferrari’s rights), “he says. “We’re saying that all we are doing is bringing new teams in and giving them enough freedom so they can control expenditure. If you want to carry on with unlimited expenditure running at the front we won’t interfere. And we won’t have a cost-capped car running in front of your car so it doesn’t interfere with you because they will be at the back."

first that ive heard the budget teams would be expected to run behind unlimited teams.(or at least, an unlimited ferrari team)