Posts Tagged FIA
It’s official: Formula 1 is saved!
How quickly things can change when people start getting dramatic. Just a few days ago the 8 biggest teams in Formula 1 (the eight remaining FOTA members) announced that they were starting their own breakaway series. They were reacting to Max Mosley (dictatorpresident of the FIA) who had made some outrageous demands for the 2010 Formula 1 championship. As it turns out, the teams were united to sign unconditionally for the 2010 season the day before they announced the breakaway series, but when the final paperwork arrived from Mosley the terms on it were not as it was discussed. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The teams were outraged, and caused them to make the announcement.
The final opportunity for reconciliation between the FIA and FOTA was yesterday, when they had a meeting in Paris. If this meeting didn’t go well, the plans for a split would have continued. Fortunately, it all went well. As it turns out, FOTA was able to sway the FIA to do what they want to them to do. Bernie Ecclestone (commercial rights holder of F1, who got stinking rich from that position) realised that without the FOTA teams F1 would lose most of the money coming into the sport. This fact is probably what swayed him to change his tune, and submit to the teams.
So what were the teams’ demands? First of all, they demanded that Max Mosley not stand for re-election as FIA president in October. Secondly, they demanded that F1 keep its current regulations for the time being, with a more gradual reduction in costs. The FIA agreed to all of this. All the current teams agreed to race in F1 until 2012, and the new teams will be helped to get up and running by the existing teams (as they demonstrated when they helped Brawn GP at the beginning of the season).
Hopefully what all this means is that we will see FOTA’s representation of F1. This means clear and transparent rules, and cost reductions. FOTA also demonstrated that when the teams stand together, they can force the FIA to do their bidding. Which does actually makes sense, considering the teams are the ones spending all the millions of pounds and carrying all the risk.
All in all I think this is the best possible result we could have gotten out of this mess. It was unfortunate that it was all very public, which did a lot of damage to the sport. But F1 will recover, and I believe within a year the sport will be better than ever.
Why I think the teams must split from F1
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?”
New tire regulations – a good idea?
For the 2009 season the FIA requested that Bridgestone widen the grip level between the two compounds it brings to each track. All drivers must use both compounds during the race. During the 2008 season there was very little difference between the compounds at some tracks, negating this rule to some extent. Thus Bridgestone was instructed to run their super soft and medium compounds at the 2009 Australian GP. This resulted in a massive difference between the two types of tires. It was most apparent with the Ferrari’s, both of which started on the super-softs. After only 5 or 6 laps the tires were destroyed, ruining the team’s strategy. Things did not go much better for the other teams (except of course, the dominating Brawns). This change in rules can probably even be blamed for the crash between Vettel and Kubica. Vettel had no grip on the option tires, and was simply not able to slow his car down enough.
Despite this, teams have already been warned that they will have to nurse their tires even more during the Malaysian GP. The Sepang track has many long sweeping corners, putting a lot of strain on the tires. The teams will probably be able to adapt their strategies to working around this problem; however, it may cause potentially dangerous situations. We will see as the season progresses what effect it will have on the races. What we will most probably see is teams running extremely short stints on the option (soft) tires.
FIA backtracks on new points system
The decision by the FIA to move to a winner-takes-all championship was met with huge opposition from fans, drivers and teams. The new points system meant that the driver with the most points will not necessarily win the championship. Instead, the driver with the most wins will get the title. Points will only be used if two or more drivers had the same number of victories.
Online petitions were launched by fans infuriated by this new system. World champions Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso all slammed the new rules. Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and Renault team boss Flavio Briatore both also spoke about their disappointment that the FIA had decided to ignore FOTA’s suggestion of changing the points system to 12-9-6-5-4-3-2-1 and instead going for a system that no-one approves.
The controversy caused the FIA to retract their decision, saying that it will be deferred to the 2010 season instead. Whether the teams will be more willing to implement this system a year from now is highly doubtful, but Bernie Ecclestone (the president and CEO of F1) is adamant that the new system will be implemented eventually.
The other announcement by the FIA that teams will have the option of a budget cap, in exchange for engineering freedom, has also been disapproved by many drivers. The main concern is that a two-tier Formula 1 system will appear from this rule, with the teams opting for the budget cap either having a huge advantage or disadvantage over the other cars. However, with this rule only coming into effect in 2010 there is still a lot of time for the FIA to change their minds (again).
New F1 regulations imposed by the FIA
From 2009 onwards, the most wins will determine which driver wins the championship. The FIA has decided against changing the points system from 1-2-3-4-5-6-8-10 to 1-2-3-4-5-6-9-12 (which was proposed by the F1 Team’s association). Instead, the points will only come into play if there’s a tie between the drivers with the most wins. In this case, the system will revert to how it worked previously, i.e. the most points will decide the championship.
These changes will only apply to the first place in the driver’s championship. The consecutive places and the constructors’ championship will still be decided by the points system. The decision has been extremely controversial. Had this system been in place in 2008 Lewis Hamilton will not have been world champion, the title going to Felipe Massa.
The other major announcement made by the FIA is that teams will have the option of having their budgets capped, in exchange for technical freedom. This will make things very, very interesting. The cap imposed will be $30million for all expenses per season, which is a fraction of what teams currently spend. This figure includes all salaries paid to the team and drivers, engine development and chassis development. It virtually only excludes the team’s motor homes.
What all of this means, is that some teams will consider competing under the current very strict regulations, but having more money to spend on making small improvements, while some teams will rather go for the budget cap and try to make a drastic improvement to their cars. No doubt it will make the 2010 season even more interesting than the 2009 season is shaping up to be.
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