Comments on: The worst–case scenario

By: snooker articles

snooker articles — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:29:01 +0000

I found your site while browsing on google for snooker and saw a few of your other pieces too. I’ve just added you to my yahoo rss Reader. Just wanted to say” keep up the good work” and congrats on a job well done! thumbsup from me

By: DG

DG — Tue, 20 May 2008 07:24:07 +0000

I couldn’t remember myself when I wrote it – it was one of the American series in the 60s – I will try and find my reference again

By: MarathonMan801

MarathonMan801 — Mon, 19 May 2008 13:17:43 +0000

McLaren used to do something very similar in the past, but not in F1, with the majority of the cars on the grid being McLarens, but not ‘Works’ McLarens.

When was that? And what was the formula?

By: DG

DG — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:09:12 +0000

What if a company such as Dallara or Lola offered full F1 Spec cars to anybody at a decent price, and maybe with a choice of engines?
They could not be called ‘Customer Cars’ since Dallara would not be fielding a ‘Works Team’, but they would not be ‘Works Teams’ themselves since they wouldn’t have developed the cars themselves. And if there is an engine choice too, it would still keep in the rules as they are now, with no new engine development being made.
I think that would safely allow smaller teams to compete and be able to spend their budgets on Bernies fees and not too much on the cars themselves – Dallara or whoever can keep development costs down since it doesn’t need to support a ‘Works Team’ as well, though it would be interesting to see how the testing would be done!
McLaren used to do something very similar in the past, but not in F1, with the majority of the cars on the grid being McLarens, but not ‘Works’ McLarens.

By: Nik

Nik — Sat, 17 May 2008 16:02:26 +0000

If it was up to only the FIA to fill up the grid, im sure you will just see 8 Ferrari’s running

By: Sav722

Sav722 — Sat, 17 May 2008 15:33:30 +0000

Good point, I don’t think it would be very team surly?

But then, if the FIA were to only offer some teams to run third cars, the organisation will once again be accused of favouritism.

I know some don’t like customer cars, but maybe F1 needs to allow them. It’s the only realistic way grid numbers will be boosted in the near future, Prodrive are a well funded and well-structured company – so they would be able to stay in F1 for some years.

It’s either that, or F1 needs more Vijay Mallya’s…

By: MarathonMan801

MarathonMan801 — Sat, 17 May 2008 10:29:00 +0000

The loss of Super Aguri has left F1 with just 10 teams and 20 cars. This is believed to be the minimum number of entrants Ecclestone is required to bring to Grands Prix. If it fell below that, he may require two teams to each bring a third car.

Would that be *every* team? If the number of teams drops to 9 (18 cars) would they all be required to field 3 cars, making a field of 27 cars?
How would that sit with the team expenditure cap?

By: DG

DG — Fri, 16 May 2008 08:07:13 +0000

I think the escalating costs will make the Manufacturers think again about staying in F1, and the Teams too, especially when you have a better chance of actually winning a race on the same circuit in a GP2 car or a Touring Car!
Bernie and his accountants have made the wrong choices recently – instead of allowing SuperAguri to stay in the Championship and maybe gain more backing, he physically shut the door on them. I think he will do exactly the same thing to any other team in financial trouble, big or small, and that is why the Teams will be leaving!
I also think that it won’t be too long before Red Bull and Williams are both classed as ‘Customers’ for not designing their own engines – bye bye Frank (and surely his KERS engine is based on Toyota too?)
Bernie does appear to want only Manufacturers in F1, but with all the recent debacles and the various freezes in development, do any of the following seem interested – Ford, Volkswagen, GM and Peugeot? TATA bringing Jaguar back would be nice, but I think they will be heading for GT Racing and ALMS.

By: milos

milos — Fri, 16 May 2008 04:09:38 +0000

there were exactly the same fears at the end of 2004 season when Ford pulled plug on F1. Jaguar for sale, Minardi Jordan without engines. The talk of some teams having to field 3 cars was very ripe. And what happened ? The season 2006 stared with 11 teams and 22 cars … Few months later there were 11 new subjects applying for the final entry …

The promised changes did not materialize, Prodrive did not enter, Super Aguri is out, Toro Rosso is up for sale. Not rosy picture. But things can change quickly.

Right now it is worth for team like Honda to spend hour of wind tunnel time and millions of dollars to come up with two ugly endplates for already ugly dumbo ears. That is simply ridiculous … If for example this sort of wasteful spending can be eliminated by new rules, it may make the F1 feasible again for privateer teams … Not a miracle medicine, but one of the steps … Budget caps similar to the farce that was made public yesterday will lead nowehere …

By: the limit

the limit — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:08:39 +0000

With the loss of Super Aguri, it is natural for people to show concern, and your article highlights those concerns to a T.
Concerning the major manufacturers, such as Honda or Toyota, I don’t see them leaving F1 and for a number of reasons.
F1 is a constantly evolving sport, always developing and changing, and its is almost always in a crisis in one way or another.
The future, it would seem, is in South East Asia, if Bernie is to be believed, and that affects the manufacturers also.
India and China, for example, are two huge, relatively untouched markets for some of these companies. In India especially, F1 will be the biggest motorsport event of the year, and what better arena to sell your products?
In America, there is too much competition, too many people chasing the same dollar, it is a more diluted market.
This is why Bernie wants more Asian races, and why the major companies will stay in F1, if not as teams, then as engine suppliers.
My fear, as you pointed out, is the death of the independant team, like Williams for example. It is not too far flung an idea to imagine, in five years say, a Toyota Williams Team knocking around, with all the decisions being made by Toyota and not Frank Williams.
You only have to look at Peter Sauber’s old team to see that it can be done, and with the right people, successfully.
This for me, as a fan, is distastefull. I like teams like Williams, McLaren, and when there were around, Jordan. It adds to the character of the sport, its soul.
However, so far as cutting costs so the ‘little fish’ can swim, don’t bank on it!
Also, don’t forget that in a few weeks we may have a new FIA President, and that is important. If it is Jean Todt, then I’ll have to watch snooker on a Sunday instead of Grands Prix.
The thought has made me puke all over the keyboard.

By: Nik

Nik — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:14:29 +0000

The biggest problem is filling the grid back up again. In terms of the current teams, I think BMW, Honda, Renault and Toyota are well locked in:

If finances were pressing Honda, they could pick up a title and other sponsors to make up 50-60M a year.

If toyota were financially pressed, they would probably be spending less than they are now (like a Renault-sized budget)

BMW are finally starting to see returns, so they will be around for a while too

Renault have the patience to know that having a bad year or two is no reason to leave the sport, esp as they have done so well

These guys are all commited, but the current problem is finding new teams (either factory or privateer) and finding them quickly

BMW edged in over years via Williams and Sauber. Renault edged in via prior engine supply and Benneton. Honda edged in steadily via BAR. Every current engine supplier already has a team, so there is nobody on the edge via either engine supply or ownership stake ready to step in. There is also some uncertainty with Concorde which could potentially mix things up for a potential new factory team

So we probably wont see new factory teams on the grid soon.

Privateers usually depend on financing from external sources, and a lot of the financial paper out there atm is being used as toilet paper – it is difficult to raise funds for anything atm, let alone an F1 team

Because of all these factors (compounded by the economic situation), going to 12 teams by next year (which would require 3 new teams with STR changing hands) will be impossible. I think its going to take a huge effort from F1/FIA to even find somebody to pick up STR

A lot of teams applied for 2008, but none of them are viable as they had nowhere near the financial support to run a full constructor team

Huge problem, and either allowing customer cars or a complete finance/budget massacre are required to fix it

By: Green Flag

Green Flag — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:14:11 +0000

The world economy is no worse now than it was 5, 10 or 20 years ago. And F1, because of hugely growing TV audiences, will keep attracting more sponsors. As always the major teams will be well financed, and the smaller teams will struggle to survive, as usual. As for engine manufacturers, most will stay, because a) F1 is high visibility, tax-deductible advertising and PR, b) they are not spending that much on engineering development anyway, and its tax deductible. It’s the teams that have the huge chassis and aero development costs – and that goes for the in-house manufacturer teams too – BMW, Toyota, Renault – and they cover their costs from sponsorships and Bernie’s handouts. Only the Honda team refuses sponsorship and they could doubtless get it if they change their mind; companies like Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds and dozens more major brands are just waiting for the chance at F1 visibility. The F1 economy is doing just fine, thank you.

By: chunter

chunter — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:17:50 +0000

Nik mentions the main issue, that no matter what the regs do to contain costs, the teams will be over-competitive and spend insane amounts of time and money just to find some hole in the rule that gains an extra second. When FIA propose changes intended to make F1 cheaper, they forget this principle entirely. FIA also have a habit of forcing all the teams to buy brand new equipment that is cheaper than the old equipment but still new and therefore an expense.

FIA need more accountants.

I haven’t been that pessimistic about the economy, I have to admit, though much of that is personal luck. I think the global economy is a bit of a red herring here. The problem is that when you have an economy that has grown way too much, eventually there will be a collapse of some sort, and evidence of this can be found in athletic sport as well, like football, basketball, baseball, and ice hockey.

Changes result, but when the right heads prevail, there isn’t too much damage, except maybe a season-long stoppage or a missed championship here and there.

By: Nik

Nik — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:48:13 +0000

At least if F1 development was more relevant to road cars, then it could be justified as R&D. But today a huge slice of F1 development is aero, and you aren’t exactly going to see a new Honda road car come out with rabbit ears any time soon..

The size of a teams budget in F1 varies from $80M to $500M, and the difference between the net result of each team is around 1-1.5 seconds. So in effect, 80% of a team budget is poured towards the final 1% of performance improvement.

Based on that, you could easily cap the budgets at $100M per year per team (and a personell cap of say, 250 people) and then trim the regulations to bring 3-4 seconds back to the cars… or…

Currently a large portion of performance improvement (I would say 80%) comes down to aero – which is a very expensive exercise (and it results in uglier cars that are harder to pass). So if you strip back aero development by specing simpler and more standard aero, you remove that whole part of the budget (can work without a cap). Development would then involve incremental engine work, reliability, balance and car design and it would cut the budgets down a lot..

So the regulations could be steadily shifted to frame an environment where expenditure takes a back seat to raw innovation. The current attempts at limiting costs (the ECU, tyre blankets, engine freeze) are just band aid solutions that usually have the opposite effect

By: MrPippy

MrPippy — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:35:15 +0000

That would be an interesting statistic: for each of the last 20-30 seasons, how many different drivers won a race, and from how many teams? Taking out the 1-win outliers (Fisi winning in the Jordan in 2003 as an extreme example), I expect that you would only see 3 or 4, maybe 5 drivers per season who really had the pace to win.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:32:14 +0000

I thought Mercedes supplied Engines to the Sauber team 1993/1994 seasons?

By: Dan Brunell

Dan Brunell — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:51:59 +0000

Diacho, the reason why the Manufacturers went away from F1 in the late 1950’s is because of 1955 LeMans accident and manufactures didn’t want to associated with motorsports because of the bad press and liability.

What is most troubling for me is not only the teams, but the races. This is the bind that Bernie has gotten himself to. Because he decided to expand the sport to the middle east and east asia, Bernie now depends on these high fee track fees. The teams get stuck with the costs of transporting teams to these exotic locations. Couple this with the revenue lost with races in non-primetime slots in Europe, then you really have to question the whole structure of the race calender.

By: Diacho

Diacho — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:28:12 +0000

@ Steve K – The underdogs in F1 haven’t had a chance to win since the 60’s, or even before… Actually, the grids have never, never been so close. Ayrton Senna said the 1st place is so unique, and that’s why only 3 or 4 drives can win in a year. So, I don’t think that’s the problem… unless you’re a manufacturer.
When I was reading the post, I thought the same as Andrew: The F1 brand is just too strong. If the manufacturers left in a rush, certainly the powers that be would make some room for the privateers. I’m not sure about what happened in the late 50s, but it was like that – the manufacturers simply went away.

By: Robert McKay

Robert McKay — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:42:30 +0000

Keith, good article. One thing: with or without the credit crunch, this is emminently possible. Manufacturers won’t throw money at the sport in such huge sums forever.

Formula 1 has to increase the number of teams somehow to prepare for this situation. Either by making it much cheaper to compete, or with customer cars, or whatever. But this problem has to be addressed, and soon, REGARDLESS of the world’s faltering economy.

By: Steve K

Steve K — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:17:42 +0000

It’s a fun sport to watch, but what does one expect when only three drivers(two teams)are capable of winning a race this year? The other 17 drivers are not dog meat. The other teams are at such a disadvantage. The sport needs more parity for the greater good of it. I’ve asked this before, who wants to run/own a team that has no chance of winning?