Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
I cant help to to think that the current F1 business model is going to collapse like the subprime bubble. The cost of running this multi-billion circus is simply not sustainable for teams, GP host, and even fans, and this is very similar to the subprime crisis in USA.
Personally I think Bernie is probably one of the biggest con man in the world who I would rank pretty close to Madoff. And the biggest victim will probably be abu dhabi, who just pump in billions of dollar for the 2 hours TV commercial.
There is a lot of scope to adapt, but they will certainly have to take some sensible steps.
Suppress the money making by the finance business
Longer racing season
More Races
Continue suppression of testing except for special occasions.
Reduce budgets/resources as targeted
Open F1 to new teams.
Adress sustainable technology like hybrid
There is no doubt that teams can run the same or better show for 10% of what was spend in the most excessive years. So why should F1 be in danger? There are still hundreds of millions of motorists on this planet and a certain number of those will allways be fans. The quality of racing is not dependant of the amount of money spend. In fact I believe racing will be better if the resources are more equal and intelligent use of rersources becomes more important.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
I agree with WhiteBlue. The racing will get better. However I think that fewer restrictions are warranted instead of more. Without testing the technology doesn't grow. And loosening the rules will allow the sport to find it's own middle ground.
I think we will see a return to the late 70's style team with a customer chassis and engine providing half the grid. This is how Williams started, among many others. Lotus never had their own engines and Williams never has either. But both teams dominated at various times and failed miserably at others. Plus this would open up the field for future Teddy Yips, Jack Brabhams and Eddie Jordans. Thats where the next James Hunt will come from, too.
The sport is just adjusting like the market. Back to reality and back to better competition.
Heaven: Where the cooks are French, the police are British, the lovers are Greek, the mechanics are German, and it is all organized by the Swiss.
Hell: Where the cooks are British, the police are German, the lovers are Swiss, the mechanics are French, and it is all organized by the Greeks.
clearly F1 today is a technical series.
with all the freedom of technicality taken away, why then would teams will to spend 400mil per year at it.
if F1 were to be given the freedom of engines then i believe that most companies are willing to come back to F1 to trial new idea and techniques to improve engine efficiency or weight or something that is at least road related.
CHT wrote:
Personally I think Bernie is probably one of the biggest con man in the world who I would rank pretty close to Madoff. And the biggest victim will probably be abu dhabi, who just pump in billions of dollar for the 2 hours TV commercial.
I don't see why you are comparing Bernie with arguably one of the biggest thieves in history. Bernie is not a con man, he is a business man, and one I personally admire very much. If it wasn't for Bernie then teams would still be operating from a Transit Van and a trailer.
If countries want to invest in a Grand Prix circuit in order to host a race, showing off their country for tourism purposes or whatever their reasons (Malaysia is another that springs to mind) then that is up to them.
"Whether you think you can or can't, either way you are right."
-Henry Ford-
As others have said, I think it can only be for the better.
The sport needs more variability and uncertainty. Tracks with awkward bumpy corners, tyres that lose grip earlier in the race, engines and transmissions that need to be nursed around the circuit. You'll get all that when the cash is tight. Perfect!
The problem is that engineering tools {CFD/Wind-tunnels/CAD-CAM/etc, etc, etc) cost massively more these days than they did with the old cunning dogs that ran their pencils over the drawing boards in the good old days. There is no way of getting away from that. Not to mention the manufacturing costs, which have also increased exponentially.
You can't tell everyone- 'Ok, no computers and hand-beaten aluminium bodies only'. The costs are what they are. But we could look at another model to adapt and progress. Take MotoGP as an example. Espeleta (the biker version of Bernie) actually pays the teams a budget to go racing. The rest the teams find for themselves.
How about we looked at things from a different perspective. How about we said 'you have to produce the fastest thing with these resources set before you (just like any design team would be set when prototyping a car or jet). I.e. You have all these facilities and £100 million at your disposal. Manage it wisely. The cleverer ones would make it work (think Brawn/Newey, etc.). The more foolish ones would spend all they had quickly and be buggered for the rest of the season (think Toyota, Honda, etc).
[As an aside, Toyota were one of the ones vigorously opposed to a budget cap. Now they're pulling out because they've spent too much money. Which one of the 14 principles do you get that chestnut from? Sorry Mr Toyoda, the joke is now on you, not Max or Bernie.]
Ok, so now that the horse has bolted. What now? Maybe I present a weak model which needs some more development. But we are mature adults here and we birth solutions from discussion. We live in a free market where people are free to spend what they want, and waste as much as they feel like. F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle. But the truth is we left the pinnacle behind when we banned active suspension and ABS and traction control. F1 is a racing series, and by it's very nature it requires boundaries. Perhaps it's just not that far a leap to make the boundaries financial as well as dimensional?
CHT wrote:
Personally I think Bernie is probably one of the biggest con man in the world who I would rank pretty close to Madoff. And the biggest victim will probably be abu dhabi, who just pump in billions of dollar for the 2 hours TV commercial.
I don't see why you are comparing Bernie with arguably one of the biggest thieves in history. Bernie is not a con man, he is a business man, and one I personally admire very much. If it wasn't for Bernie then teams would still be operating from a Transit Van and a trailer.
If countries want to invest in a Grand Prix circuit in order to host a race, showing off their country for tourism purposes or whatever their reasons (Malaysia is another that springs to mind) then that is up to them.
+1 How can anyone ever point to Abu Dhabi or Singapore for being a victim here. They have the money, they want to advertise, and advertisement is what they got. It's simple economics in which both F1, Bernie and the circuits believe they have a good deal.
Second, in order to solve this problem I have said repeatedly that I strongly believe the best solution would be an FIA governed budget (although a bit higher than the initial proposal by Max) and at the same time open up the rules. This would enable teams to extract performance from creativity (as in the Lotus days), rather than performance from spending.
Tomba wrote:Second, in order to solve this problem I have said repeatedly that I strongly believe the best solution would be an FIA governed budget (although a bit higher than the initial proposal by Max) and at the same time open up the rules. This would enable teams to extract performance from creativity (as in the Lotus days), rather than performance from spending.
The problem with this is that it's very easy to find speed through new and innovative means. With technical freedom and only a small budget you can get cars going much faster then they would do today. They would quickly rise to dangerous speeds. This is less of an issue with modern tracks with enormous concrete run off areas, but would make places like Spa dangerous.
As they say finding the last 1% of performance costs as much as the first 99%. At the moment all teams are spending tons of money exctacting that last hundredth of a second.
Admittedly a series like back in the 90's where at least the cars had different approaches would be nice, but there would have to be at least SOME limitations to prevent the deathtraps that used to be produced in the name of innovation.
I think the best ay to acieve this is to set limits, but not define how the limits are to be reached. eg maximum of 750bhp, maximum of x ton downforce, maximum fuel level specified.
You can then tailor this to achieve suitable and acceptable cornering speeds.
I'm personally looking forward to F1 being slapped around the face a bit, it'll bring it back down to earth and hopefully produce more sport less business.
Personally i think that there sould be a limit on the resource base that a F1 team can have. Teams of 700-800 people shouldnt be allowed. A team should be able to operate with arround 400 people tops, taking Force India and STR as the prime examples, ill also include what is now the Brawn team post Honda. I propose this for F1 teams resources:
* One single wind tunnel per team, not the current trend of 2 or 3 per team.
* Limit on the CFD power. (Im not so well up on this area so would require guidance on this one)
* Impose a limit on the the design teams, make it that they design team of a car can only be limited to 20 "acredited" people in the team. Get the bigger design departments sich as Ferarri & McLaren to work with the same that the smaller guys work with.
* A limit on the ammount of chassis produced, as BMW Sauber, Toyota and a couple of others have produced up to 10+ a year since at a cost of £600,000+ per tub. A limit of say 4 would surfice, Renault, Force India and Red Bull can do it like that, STR and Brawn did it with 3 this year.
* Standard telemetry systems, with open and free usage. Also with this, limit the ammount of data engineers at tracks to 10 per car and no more than 10 per team back at base.
* A FIA approved parts base, meaning there is a short list of parts that can be used on certain areas of the car, such as Brakes and certain suspension parts.
* A single or maximum of three control tyre compound(s) that are road relevant. Limiting ammount of mechanical grip you can get from them to 50% of current levels.
* Free up some of the engine development ban areas, but dyno test a single engine from all manufacturers at the start of each season and allow adjustment of RPM and Torque curve accordingly to the most powerful.
* If the FIA want greener cars, limit each car to 200KG of fuel for the weekend, also along with the lifting of engine ban areas, produce engines that can go long distances on that fuel.
* Free up the areo regs to somewhere between the 2008 and 2009 specs, but encourage designers to have a clean, or clener airflow out the back of it. With this a minimum ride height of the car will be enforced to allow underfloor aero.
* Specify that all cars need to start off at least (or a maximum of) 850kg (or equivelent weight) and have pre race weight checks. Post race cars should be scruteenered, not weight checked. This should allow bigger drivers to compete with smaller ones weight wise.
* Transfer windows, make it that a team cant change a driver till a mid season point, or 2 specified races, say round 6 and round 12. Also teach team, if a Massa incedent happens has to have a specified young driver in GP2 or a other lower formula to take place of the injured driver, A specified test driver that has had race experience in F1 in the past 2 years will also be allowed. (Get the teams to have a young driver programme)
* Have "Monday" tests for teams at 4 GPs in the european season and one out side Europe for young drivers and test drivers to get into the car and get up to speed with it. Id say make the rounds to be Barcelona, Turkey, Hungary, Monza & Bahrain. They are at the tracks, so it wont cost the teams too much more for an extra day there in a test facility.
Give the teams a few inches, but with that the FIA should come to aggreement with the teams for some sort of budget cap or something to the same extent.
CHT wrote:
Personally I think Bernie is probably one of the biggest con man in the world who I would rank pretty close to Madoff. And the biggest victim will probably be abu dhabi, who just pump in billions of dollar for the 2 hours TV commercial.
I don't see why you are comparing Bernie with arguably one of the biggest thieves in history. Bernie is not a con man, he is a business man, and one I personally admire very much. If it wasn't for Bernie then teams would still be operating from a Transit Van and a trailer.
If countries want to invest in a Grand Prix circuit in order to host a race, showing off their country for tourism purposes or whatever their reasons (Malaysia is another that springs to mind) then that is up to them.
+1 How can anyone ever point to Abu Dhabi or Singapore for being a victim here. They have the money, they want to advertise, and advertisement is what they got. It's simple economics in which both F1, Bernie and the circuits believe they have a good deal.
Second, in order to solve this problem I have said repeatedly that I strongly believe the best solution would be an FIA governed budget (although a bit higher than the initial proposal by Max) and at the same time open up the rules. This would enable teams to extract performance from creativity (as in the Lotus days), rather than performance from spending.
As you have correctly said, F1 is now more of an advertising platform for rich countries to promote tourism rather than sport. And that's the same reason why F1 fans have to pay through their nose to watch F1 race.
Unfortunately the only proven beneficial in this economics is Bernie.
I have no idea of recent turnovers, but in 2004 FOA (Formula One Administration), which is the holder of the commercial rights, reported a hefty turnover of 750 million (pounds I imagine) before taxes and 447 million after taxes, up from 215 millions in 2003 and 127 millions in 2002. I think that almost half of that money goes to teams (47%).
In recent divorce filings, Ecclestone and his wife have a fortune of 2.4 billion.
It does sound good to me.
It's true that Toyota, Bridgestone, BMW and Honda left: I think that tells us someting about car manufacturers and F1: it's the end of an era. FOTA is out.
The sport will always be around. The absolute worst that could happen would be if the sport's value falls to a level that Bernie can't get the revenue needed to pay CVC's debt. But in that case, CVC and their banks take the loss and the series either gets restructured or sold off with a lower note. I don't think that will happen unless some of the tracks go under, since there are some long term contracts in place - long enough for the economy to turn around before they're up.
One also has to figure in the possibility of CVC renegotiating with the teams for a smaller cut if need be.
Not that the racing isn't going to change. The next few years will be interesting, but that's good, right?
