FIA - Budget Caps from 2009.

[WhiteBlue]

When the concord agreement was first done it had a purpose that is now outdated to a big degree. the TV and race fee marketing wasn't centralized and the FIA was in a governing and commercial role. that is completely different now. separation between rules process and the marketing is practically complete due to the EU requirement and the FIA FOM deals. the three corner deal between the FIA, the FOM and the teams has largely broken down to three separate fields. marketing between teams and FOM, commercial rights between FIA and FOM and championship participation between FIA and the teams.

obviously the FIA is of the opinion that participants in the championship must not necessarily be constructors. the problem is that this position isn't negotiated with the FOM. the question has a big impact on the value of a team because in the concord agreement only the original constructors were allowed to participate in the championship which shuts out new competitors from the cartell. the question is: will this model work in the next 8 years? the way the teams are dying it is very questionabel. and something that does not work should not be exclusively implemented only because is has somehow worked at a different time.

I see the budget issue not necessarily qualitatively linked with the constructors issue. the majority has decided that for now the constructors status is required again from 2010 and the FIA is supposed to implement that unless it sees fundamental problems for the sport.

there is certainly a quantitative influence. the budget must be uniform and higher if every team is constructor. if not there could be two classes of participants with different commercial benefit classes and budgets.

ideally a solution should be defined for both models. at the moment they could start with the constructor modell. if the number of teams collapses they would have the customer model ready to go and no negotiations are necessary any more. the switch could be implemented with the necessary swiftness to save the championship.

[Rob W]

That is a strange logic Rob W. Wasn't it McLaren who were prepared to sell a chassis to Prodrive?

And don't you forget that new, additional teams will always start with buying something existing? Williams did that, Ron Dennis did that. They could not go into business with something entirely designed from scratch by their own and their own capital.

I don't disagree with this. What I have issue with is that, coupled with the budget restrictions, there would be avenues to enter into what could be seen as unsporting arrangements. For example: cheaper chassis if you guarantee to vote along these lines when we ask.. Or, what if they requested that a customer team ran a supplier/sponsor logo on their car which enabled them to get more money from the sponsor? Or stipulated that the customer team's testing data was to be passed back to them (or organised by them even) to essentially halve the cost of testing for the team - saving valuable budget which could then be used elsewhere.

So far as teams starting out - good point. But perhaps it would be made so a new team could buy chassis for two years only and couldn't compete in the Constructor's Championship those years - we had a similar idea on that aspect. It may be a practical way to ease new entrants into F1 and also vet them for real 'stayers'.

In the end the governing and maintenance of the budget caps is where it will fall over. Can you imagine Flavio screaming his lungs out saying "I did 194 hours of wind tunnel testing for X million... how can McLaren possibly be saying they did 275 hours for the same amount, especially when staff rates are 4% higher in the UK???" - type thing.

It will be never ending and cause way more hassle than it's worth.

On a similar note -- not sure why I'm posting it in this thread -- but someone who works for a F1 team who I've known for years said there are growing grumblings that Ferrari entered a deal with the FIA last year over the spying antics which basically said: "McLaren f***ed up, cheated and lied about it for months. No matter how much you punish them we were still hampered by spending money on designs which others got the benefit of (by proxy)... so we want to be compensated *somehow*." Any guesses how?

R

[donskar]

Interesting:

someone who works for a F1 team who I've known for years said there are growing grumblings that Ferrari entered a deal with the FIA last year over the spying antics which basically said: "McLaren f***ed up, cheated and lied about it for months. No matter how much you punish them we were still hampered by spending money on designs which others got the benefit of (by proxy)... so we want to be compensated *somehow*."

Lots of perspectives on this one:
Are there really grumblings? Any examples anyone konw of?
"McLaren f***ed up, cheated and lied about it for months." The ultimate outcome of that sorry debacle might be seen as supporting this contention.
"No matter how much you punish them we were still hampered by spending money on designs which others got the benefit of (by proxy)... " Ferrari should have no trouble supporting that point.