Comments on: FOTA claims to support the fans – but do the fans support FOTA? (Poll)

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:09:11 +0000

You must be so proud Keith.

To have such an International Body such as Ferrari quoting your lil’ ol’ website.

Keep up the good work.

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:22:42 +0000

Ferrari have responded to the results of this poll!

The Formula 1 fans’ noise on the internet continues in favour of Ferrari and FOTA [...] British website http://www.F1fanatic.co.uk published the results of a survey where 83% of the fans agree with the FOTA.

http://www.ferrari.com/English/News/Pages/090617_Fans_on_the_internet_are_with_FOTA.aspx

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:35:17 +0000

yes

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:29:33 +0000

Yes reducing race distances is not good in my book, but 99% of FOTA propsals are probably worth looking at.
I’m sure they will have decent ideas to put forward if they have to break away from FIA.

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:17:54 +0000

I think the main point is the FIA’s lack of compassion toward all the poeple who may lose their livlihoods if the budget cap comes in as it is proposed now. yes jobs will have to go to cut costs, but maybe some way could be found to reduce costs without losing too much of the workforce.
In the current financial climate people need their jobs more than ever.
If you look at any other major company they do not take job cuts arbitrarily. Budgets should be reduced slowly over a number of years 3 -5 i would say. And for newer teams there should be help from current teams in way of loans or something from the money saved.

And money is going to be continually wasted by having new rules year in and year out.

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:59:51 +0000

I repeat again and again i cannot agree more.

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:54:42 +0000

The FIA will NEVER!!!!! realise this Kayleigh is my fear

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:57:07 +0000

I also meant to say that in football/soccer you would never get the referees getting involved in running the sport and the rules. They just REF ER EE don’t they?

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:44:44 +0000

From reading various posts and articles regarding the FOTA vs FIA it has become quite clear that the fundamental running of motorsport in general has to change to stop everything from running itself into the ground. I am not just talking F1 either, i’m sure most motorsport series are in need of improvement.
What i see is the need for a body to be set up (totally independant of the FIA, with no ties at all), to be used to introduce and run the regulations of each motorsport series. The teams should not really have any part of the regulations, nor should the FIA.
The teams should be there to just to race period.
And the FIA should only be there to referee and make sure the teams and drivers are running to the series regulations set out by the above mention body. And this needs to be seen to be done correctly and above board, totally transparent.
People need to know that the sport is run fairly, and refereed fairly.
Three sides of the infernal triangle should not get involved with each other.

The only sticking block to this is the CVC and Bernie and Max.

With these 3 entities overseeing motorsport then nothing good will ever work properly.

By: scunnyman

scunnyman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:12:20 +0000

I agree Martin. More people on here should look at the history of formula one instead the here and now. Some who have been watching and following F1 for a short time haven’t had the time really to justify making a valid comment.
You can usually tell those on here who have been following F1 for longer than a couple of seasons by the way they comment.

By: al_amana

al_amana — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:27:22 +0000

Excellent point Martin. Unfortunately you won’t get much more than my response to your post as it seems any threads more than a few hours old tend to be moot!

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:52:10 +0000

You are wrong on the FIA having the right idea.
If they had the right idea then this whole mess wouldnt have started.
Honda leaving the sport is not that big a deal. They have done it 3 times now. The first after they finally won a few GP’s, then again after the turbo era as it slide back to normally aspirated and again recently. They leave whenever they want to.
Look at who has stuck with the sport thru the good and the bad, they are the ones trying to preserve the sport at the top of motor racing. If you want budget caps and single engine series, stay with IRL, that way 10 minutes after the race starts you can be comfortably asleep either in your recliner or in the grandstands.
The only way for this series to survive and be taken seriously is to break away and tell Max and Bernie to kiss off.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:57:26 +0000

Where is the evidence they currently spend 500 million of anything.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:44:43 +0000

to cut costs maybe homologate the cars, and aero packages

Submit your low, mid and high aero packages at the start of the season. That is now what you will use thru out the season. You do this at the end of pre-season testing and before you roll out onto the track in Melbourne.

Have a soft, med, hard, inter, wets. Use what ever you want.

Open up in season testing to allow rookie drivers to do testing for a limited amount of days or km.

By: phil c

phil c — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:26:54 +0000

Well I dont totally agree with that, because KERS cost between 50 and 100 million, and a useless piece of kit. Yes teams may have spent some extra dollars else where but they have every right to.

As for Honda, Honda left because there sponsorship theory went to crap, i bet they would be kicking themselves now. You cannot come into f1 and expect to win first season out.

My issue is and you still have not answered the question is you cannot police the budget cap plain and simple. And there are a tonne of ways to reduce cost. Not only this, the FIA have no right to control how much a team spends. All the teams know what they can and cant spend, apart from honda and ford, which both of which were useless, the teams must be getting some form of return for there investment in the sport. If they weren’t they would have all left a long time ago.

You can control spending without the need to budget cap. Simple things like why do we need 30 people at a pit stop, why do we need 50 engineers at a race, standard non performance enhancing parts, rims, tyres, ecu, brake disc, caliapers, non exotic material. The issue for me is the manufacutres spent a truck load of money and the FIA expect to give it all up because they said so, its a crap rule. It like me writing a law to tell Google, to stop spending money because they have attained a competitive advantage because of good investment to let yahoo catch up because they were useless at there job. But google did it all legally. The money issues if there is one, is because of the FIA, Bernie and inappropriate distribution of revenue.

By: Patrickl

Patrickl — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:17:39 +0000

The teams don’t spend more money because of the rule changes. If there are no rule changes they spend the same amount of money. At best/worst it diverts money from one area to another.

Teams were spending 200 million on their engines. The engines were frozen. So you would assume budgets to come down by at least 150 million or so. The budgets went up! The teams simply started spending the money on aero development.

The relationship between budgets and rule changes is exactly the other way around. The rules need to be changed so often because the teams spent too much money on making the cars faster. The rules then need to be changed to bring the speeds back down. If they would spend less, the rules wouldn’t have to be changed so often.

Honda had signed to race in 2009. Did they race? No, they simply took their losses and buggered out. So what is a contract with a manufacturer worth? Well their deposit money, but nothing more.

Besides, I’ll say this again, the teams themselves asked for the budget cap in 2008.

It really is the only viable way to actually get the budgets down without turning F1 into a spec series. All the teams (but two) know this, but Ferrari is afraid people will cheat.

They don’t come with an alternative, because they simply don’t want an alternative. Ferrari and the other manufacturers want to keep their competitive edge by spending twice what a “privateer” team can spend. It’s bad enough that they are getting whipped by the privateers right now. Let alone that this could occur on a regular basis.

By: Patrickl

Patrickl — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:44:34 +0000

More facts on the matter:
http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=38194

This led to the World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) decision of 17 March which introduced a voluntary financial regulation and technical freedoms for the capped teams to enable their cars to achieve Formula One levels of performance. Ferrari voted against the financial regulation at that meeting but not against special technical freedoms for the new teams

The detailed regulations were discussed and voted on at the WMSC meeting of 29 April. The new Ferrari representative on the WMSC was Mr. di Montezemolo, replacing Jean Todt whose Ferrari contract finished on 31 March. Mr. di Montezemolo chose not to attend but gave a proxy to Mr. Macaluso, the Italian president of Karting, who also did not attend but joined the meeting by video link. His was one of two votes against the new rules but no reasons or alternative were offered.

By: Patrickl

Patrickl — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:35:40 +0000

Indeed that ’start a war and see where the chips land’ style of negotiating is what makes me blame Mosley for his part in this debacle.

To be honest, it does appear to be the only way he can (could) get the teams to go along with any changes at all though.

The teams are always full of good intentions, but when it comes down to it nothing ever happens when you let them work it out for themselves.

By: al_amana

al_amana — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:11:19 +0000

I think you’re getting a little delirious VXR might be time to take some R&R!

By: al_amana

al_amana — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:07:14 +0000

Umm I find it strange that you would post a link to an article that is actually against a budget cap!?!? With the addition of a smiley face none the less!