FOTA set for crucial RRA meeting in Abu Dhabi

F1 Fanatic round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: F1 teams face further talks over the Resource Restriction Agreement.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Teams back FOTA ahead of ‘key’ talks

Ross Brawn: “I would hate to see FOTA suffer because of disagreements over RRA. We need to try and separate those things.”

Renault Sport F1 appoints new president (F1 Technical)

“Renault Sport F1, the Formula 1 division of Renault, announces that Jean-Michel Jalinier will become its President from 1 January 2012. Mr Jalinier replaces Bernard Rey, who is leaving the company to pursue a new opportunity.”

Max Mosley wins privacy case in France (BBC)

“Mr Mosley has already won damages in the British courts, but sued in France where the paper was also distributed.”

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

Vickyy regrets trying to use last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to win over some friends to F1:

Last year, there was a huge build up for the race being a championship decider. I managed to gather my 12 non-F1-follower friends to witness the spectacle after forcing them to change their pre-decided plans. An hour into the race, 2 of my friends went to bed at 6pm here in India and others were cursing me for ruining their Sunday.

I feebly remember that it was one of the most watched race of the season, and obviously many were seeing it for the first time. And I say, these kind of races have/would really hurt the F1, potentially loosing the viewership at least for the medium term (as now I sit alone in front of TV for 19 weekends).
Vickyy

From the forum

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

But it is Renault team principal Eric Boullier’s birthday today – he turns 38.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

21 comments on “FOTA set for crucial RRA meeting in Abu Dhabi”

  1. To continue Vickyy’s idea, bad races can happen, which also hurt the ratings and all. It’s the same with football, 80% of the matches are quite boring, if you’re not follower of either team playing.

    But we really didn’t need Abu Dhabi’s hideous track to help bad races happening.

    F1 should learn from mistakes… so should the newcoming countries that want to be part of the circus. Employing Tilke’s design group should be avoided.

    Silverstone’s a great example of what can be done, the new circuit keeps the tradition, yet heavily improved racing there. Or if you want to go to other extremes, hire the Potrero de los Funes guys.

    1. It’s just wrong that we don’t race there. Wrong I say. Surley all the money F1 makes could be spent putting on races at the worthwhile tracks. Surley the TV + Ads money would cover the lack of a fee and reduced seating capacity. I mean look at the thing!

      1. When the majority owners of the sport is an equity company, and roughly half the profits go towards satisfying the interest on the loan they took out to purchase the commercial rights – unfortunately not.

    2. Everyone complains about Tilke, yet the drivers LOVE the track in India.

      1. Which only reinforces the point that at Abu Dhabi he has done a bad job as he can do much better.

      2. @wdf2 as @bosyber, the fact they got it right at India proves how bad the Yas Marinas is. Plus, they had more money available for Abu Dhabi.

  2. @ COTD Funny thing is, I really enjoyed the race while I was watching it, had the situation been any different, I’d have been sent to sleep, but having watched every lap of every race that year, having been deeply involved with the story of the whole championship, it was one of the tensest sporting spectacles I’ve ever seen.

    About 10-15 laps before the end however the feeling started to creep up that actually, the race had been spoiled, twice, and was finished. We didn’t get to see Hamilton fight Vettel, or Alonso make a bid for the title everyone thought he’d probably won. Then the race finished, we had a pretty amazing conclusion and I only really thought about how absolutley rubbish I would have found the whole thing later. An while the Renaults specific features made it the worst possible car to be stuck behind, an while such a race only occured because of the championship situation, when you look back, it’s not like say Brazil 08, it’s not a race that anyone will ever watch again. Title deciders have an inevitable tendency to be a bit cagey, but I never thought I’d see a track worse than Valencia built at a cost of £800 million.

    Still, if they get the DRS zones right we might have a race worth watching. Although it shows the system up for what it really is, a method to paper over the cracks of a sport thats chosen to ignore the real cause of the issues with it’s spectacle: track and car design.

    1. My feelings about the 2010 race pretty well match what you write here @Scribe, it is just so sad they didn’t find a way to make the track better. I’m sure it’s a commercial success, given the many VIPs who like to bling, and yes, it was a tense race given the WDC situation, but even though I still think it was a fine bit of racing by Petrov, the track just made it too easy not to get a good race on.

      1. @bosyber It was indeed a cracking effort from Petrov!

    2. Exactly @scribe, I didn’t feel for one moment “when’s this race gonna end?” as the tension was incredible. I knew Alonso really had one only point to pass Petrov, and I waited anxiously for him to reach that zone lap after lap.
      Now if I think back to it, I reckon the action on track was appalling.

  3. If the teams want unity within FOTA, maybe they should start showing some instead of trying to get each other in trouble over the RRA.

      1. The notorious party line of “improving the show” is, really, a lie. The teams are more than happy to “improve the show” – so long as they are out in front. Everyone else can have the passing and the excitement and giving the crowds what they want, just so long as one team (and each team would prefer it to be them) is winning everything.

        That’s what this RRA business is about – any team found to have violated it will no doubt have their FOTA membership suspended. This means their voting rights will be suspended, and they will have no ability to influence the sporting and technical regulations. This will give the other teams an advantage, because they will be able to have the rules move in a way that will invariably favour them, whilst moving away from the rules of the suspended team (in this case, Red Bull appears to be the target). And at the same time, everyone is trying to figure out ways around the RRA whilst getting everyone else penalised.

        1. So more or less the same as with any regulations in F1 then? They should be used to that by now, shouldn’t they?

  4. Irrelevant, but I’d just like to say that I used the F1Fanatic community as my example in my Sociology Exam today. Went quie well too.

    Back on topic, I actually enjoyed the race last year, not the best, but still enjoyable. In the context of the championship, the tension was huge.

    1. In reply to comment of the day^^^

  5. Compare Brazil 2008 (the passion, the love of F1, the weather, the fantastic track) with the championship decider at Abu Dhabi in 2010 (artificial, no racing history, no weather, etc..) which in fact should have been even better given the fantastic championship we had.

    I don’t buy the argument that they will get a racing history by having an F1 race because all places have to start somewhere. Yes they do, but they need to walk before they can run because otherwise there is nothing deeper behind the facade, just Bernie turning up with loads of classic cars and racing drivers solely because they are getting paid a sheds load of oil money.

    Passion for motorsport needs to start at a grass roots level and evolve a gradual interest in the sport over time like it has done in Europe and South America.

    To quote Paul McCartney, “you can’t buy me love”.

    (Of course, a decent circuit wouldn’t do any harm either)

    1. I don’t think I will ever see a race as good as or that has as much of an effect on me as Brazil 2008 did.

      You’re of course right, the championship battle of 2010 will go down in history and although the result of the race added to the drama, the season deserved a better send off.

  6. they should allow DRS to all drivers all the time, except when it’s a safety issue… but the leader of the race won’t have DRS enabled. that should make things fun.

  7. Kimi Raikkonen has apparently admitted to negotiating with Williams on Finnish television. With investor Toto Wolff confirming negotiations last week, some people are expecting that Raikkonen could be announced to be racing at Williams in 2012 as early as tonight.

  8. Interesting article here. Not much in the way of “new” news, but F1Fanatics might fancy a read.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-09/ecclestone-flailing-sees-formula-one-as-prey-for-murdoch-agnelli-takeover.html

Comments are closed.