This interview points to the difficulty that F1 is facing. The teams cannot effectively formulate the rules for the future.Briatore says F1 needs an overhaul
By Michele Lostia and Pablo Elizalde Tuesday, July 29th 2008, 11:16 GMT
Renault team boss Flavio Briatore believes Formula One needs an overhaul in order to satisfy the fans and get the teams to have a bigger say.
The Italian also feels the sport is hurting due to Max Mosley focusing on his personal problems.
"His absence is felt as there's no project for F1. The teams feel abandoned," Briatore told Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper.
Speaking about the issues Formula One is facing, Briatore said: "The Concorde agreement, the number of races, the costs, the spectacle, the imperative increase of revenues. Formula One needs to be re-designed.
"I feel that it should be down to the teams to decide, by electing in turns a director of operations. A guy who does things, not a PR person.
"On top of that, we need to decide with a 51% majority, not unanimously like now, otherwise we'll carry on being stuck."
He added: "Nowadays Ecclestone takes 50% of all revenues, but we are supposed to be able to reduce our costs by 50%.
"How? Starting from the engines. Making them more environment-friendly, accepting Mosley's challenge of reducing fuel consumption by 50% by 2015, while cutting the high costs of the engine themselves and also cutting the staff.
"The problem is that us, Renault, have stuck to the letter of the current regulations on frozen engines, and we've been buggered: others didn't do that and are far ahead, while we suffer. It's not fair."
Briatore and the rest of team principals and other officials will meet today in Maranello to discuss the future of the sport.
I find it very positive that Briatore approves of the majority voting. If everything else that Max Mosley has done in F1 is abolished this is the one thing they should keep.
He also does not oppose the main objectives of increasing the entertainment, cutting fuel consumption by half and reducing cost to 50%. Those are good objectives but as always the devil is in the detail.
The issue of the number of races can only go in one direction. More reces and less testing. The test sessions one week before Silverstone and Hockenheim are completely ludicrous. With a rigid test schedule of say three tests per season and 5-8 test days per car between seasons it should be possible to do 24 races going from begin of February to end of October. In summer they should have a 3 week break. New races should be selected in order to be run in the southern hemishere or at least in places where you can run in Feb, March, Sept and Oct.
This idea of having an operations director sounds like Bernie is thinking of retirement. As long as Bernie is there nobody will direct anything but the schedeule for cleaning the heads.
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