Max Mosley: The destroyer of F1

This weekend’s F1 race in Monaco was supposed to have been the highlight of the season. The entire week-end was as glamarous as ever, the racing was spectacular and even the GP2 races was exciting. However, it all took place under the gloom that this may be the last Monaco GP with the likes of Ferrari, Toyota and BMW competing. All of these teams, as well as Red Bull (and thus Toro Rosso) and Renault have made serious threats to withdraw from F1 from 2010 if the new regulations aren’t changed. The FIA wants to implement an optional cost cap of 40 million pounds, meaning that the top teams will have to cut their expenditure by more than two thirds, or face much stricter regulations. Although this seems like a good idea, especially with the current economic climate, many of the teams will not be able to meet this requirement in time. All teams are committed to reducing costs, but not by a factor of 3 or 4 in such a short period of time. What will happen then with the optional nature of the cap is that a two-tier F1 championship will develop, with either the cost-capped cars with more technical freedom, or the more pricey cars, having a huge performance gap. What’s even worse is that the rules are obviously and drastically biased towards the cost-capped teams.

I personally feel that this should be the last straw and that the teams must break away and form their own series. The FIA has been needlessly forcing silly regulations on the cars for years, and has been VERY inconsistent in their punishing drivers and teams for breaking the rules. The new regulations of the 2009 season is proof of this – the drastic change in the aerodynamic regulations should have made it much easier for cars to pass each other at circuits like Barcelona. However, not much had changed from 2008. The race was still a boring procession from lap 1. In fact, things have gotten worse due to some cars having KERS, and others not. Sebastion Vettel was held up the entire race behind the slower Ferrari of Felipe Massa, not being able to pass due to Massa having the advantage of KERS. What’s insane about the entire KERS situation is that the FIA wants to standardise the system from 2010, meaning all teams will get a standard KERS unit from the FIA. In other words, all the millions of pounds the teams have spent on developing their own solutions will be wasted.

Another big problem with the current regulations is the fiasco with the so-called double diffuser. The rules were not written clearly enough, so we ended up with some cars with KERS, some with the double diffuser, and some without it, thus creating a multi-tier race already.

Further proof of the amateurish nature of how the FIA is run was found when they published the full regulations for the 2010 season a couple of months ago. Included in these regulations were the so-called “medals rule”, by which the driver with the most wins (and not the most points) will win the driver’s championship. This caused yet another uproar. However, the rule mysteriously disappeared from the official document a couple of weeks later, the FIA mentioning that it was a slip-up on their part somewhere on their website.

Finally, the FIA has proven time and again that they cannot consistently punish drivers and teams. I’m not going to go into this right now, but the pit-lane release penalties that were given during the 2008 season is enough proof of this.

Teams meet in Monaco to discuss the crisis

So, that’s why I think the teams should just split from the FIA (and thus F1) and get it over with. The FIA has caused incredible damage to the image of the sport, and has made many people very angry (myself included). Most of the fans (especially the Ferrari Tifosi) will follow their teams, rather than F1. I believe Max Mosley is sadly mistaken if he thinks F1 is bigger than its teams. If Ferrari leaves, it will be a disaster for F1. If most of the big constructors leave, F1 will not survive. Sure, there are smaller teams wating in the wings the enter, but as Fernando Alonso said (I’m paraphrasing here): “Why would you want to chase away 7 big teams, and replace them with a couple of smaller and unknown teams?”