Comments on: The FIA owe Prodrive an apology

By: Obster

Obster — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:51:58 +0000

I like igor’s idea-only last year’s cars are allowed. With the pace of F1 development they would not be a serious threat to anyone.
What is this I am hearing about a coming agreement that customer cars will be allowed for 2008, but banned for good in ’09 and beyond?

By: Alianora La Canta

Alianora La Canta — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:46:34 +0000

The point is that the presence or absence of customer cars has a considerable influence on what terms teams can compete on. Customer cars may make it cheaper for teams to be in F1, but only if they cede to their vendor team. This means that eventually only two or three teams will effectively be in F1 – they will simply have a large number of cars each.

Banning customer cars avoids this, but also increases the price to the point where it severely limits who can get in. It’s almost a catch-22 and that’s why there’s such an argument over the whole thing. However, if the FIA had been capable of making its mind up and enforcing a clear verdict on customer cars, a lot of this mess could have been avoided.

By: Number 38

Number 38 — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:15:42 +0000

There’s nothing wrong with ‘customer cars’ and what would F1 look like without them? The problem starts with the overly ambigous FIA regs. On the surface we seem to be ranting about the term ‘constructor’ but what if ProDrive drew up the design but then had it manufactured in McLaren facility, but McLaren’s facility is over-worked so they have the wings manufactured by Honda’s F1 works.You can see the criss-cross of terms ‘manufacturer’and ‘constructor’ and why not require the team to manufacture their own brake and fuel systems (often commercially purchased these days) or to carry the arguement to absudity…..manufacture their own engines. The problem STARTS in the FIA regs and until MadMax gets the book sorted………..I’m in favor of run ANYTHING, we need the entries. Of course the teams aren’t helping with Williams and Spyker bickering about STR and Super Aguri. What’s the point ?

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:51:25 +0000

David Richards gave an indication that the reason Prodrive aren't able to race next year is because customer cars won't be allowed:

Clearly the premise on which we put our entry in, those circumstances have changed dramatically now and everybody acknowledges that situation. If we cannot enter on that basis then so be it, but we need to know what a new Concorde Agreement will say. If, for instance, it determines you need to be a constructor then we need to understand what the definition of a constructor is: how many common components are going to be allowed in the future because what resource will we need to achieve that?

Autosport.com - Prodrive not giving up on F1 ambitions (external)

By: bernie's nemesis

bernie's nemesis — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:32:20 +0000

How can a sports governing body be so incredibly incompetent continually, and everybody excepts it.

An agreement is an agreement. Could you imagine Max or Bernie being as complacent if somebody broke their word to them.
This oversite has probably cost a couple of mill in wasted development and diverted a few dozen peoples careers in directions they would have not chosen to take.
Some how I can not see such a diversion sitting so easily with tweedle dee and tweedle dum.

By: Cooperman

Cooperman — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:23:30 +0000

The FIA make an apology? But that would suggest that they were wrong and, as we all know, the FIA being wrong is against the rules anyway.

By: Robert Mckay

Robert Mckay — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:39:47 +0000

“I didn’t mean that Toro Rosso and Super Aguri were rubbish, I meant that the constant arguing and threats of lawsuits from Spyker and Williams should have warned Prodrive that the customer car idea was dead in the water.”

Ah, apologies, my misunderstanding. Yes, that’s correct. But to an extent these only manifested themselves quite late in the process, and anyway the argument about Toro Rosso and Super Aguri tended to centre on the fact that they were doing it before the rules had been modified, and not neccessarily simply on the principle of customer cars, although that was obviously a part of it.

By: igor

igor — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 02:39:34 +0000

heres my take on customer cars: allow the sale of chassis of previous years, like aguri running the ra106 instead of ra107 this year.

this would allow small teams to get a start by buying obsolete, but still fast chassis, but still give an advantage to constructors who build their own chassis, as their chassis will be newer and more highly developed than the customer chassis.

By: milos

milos — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:43:42 +0000

The thing is FIA can’t sort out this mess, because changes to Concorde Agreement must be approved by all the teams. FIA simply promised something the could not guarantee… And that is the root of all the problems.

I agree with Vertigo here, that if Prodrive really wanted to enter F1 from 2008, they should have had some sort of plan B, exactly as Aguri had plan B when he was not allowed to race old Honda cars right from beginning. They should have had the plan B, because the problems with the whole customer cars idea have been obvious for very long time.

Richards however can still go and join forces with Aguri Suzuki… That is still an open route to F1 for next year. Oh, wait, that would be customer car again

By: SoLiD

SoLiD — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:26:46 +0000

It’s incredible that the FIA hasn’t sorted this out after a whole season…because it’s been a problem since the start (or even before) of the season! Very sad, but I guess they feared it would cause some problems and maybe a loss of 2 teams. I like the id of more competitive cars…but I can see ppl like Frank Williams who try and try with the money they got, to create their own cars and be competitive, while a new team comes in and upstages them with a car they didn’t build, but just bought of a shelf.
I do believe a customer team needs to develop their own car and updates.. maybe only allow to buy 1 or 2 year old chassis… and 2 championship rankings maybe, altough it won’t help, as ppl only see wich cars are in front.
Oh well… difficult