Grand Prix Rejects

DonTirri wrote:FOTA series will die in 5 years max, while F1 will stay and live on.

It's rather ironic, but I agree with Max Mosley: there will be one championship next year. Our difference in opinion is that he thinks he'll still be around, whereas I'm pretty sure Sex Fiend is going to be nowhere.

You know what's funny? MotoGP. 6 races down the line the 3 top pilots are equal in points, in the last race Rossi passed Lorenzo in the very last corner, and things seem to work. Kawasaki dropped? The bike equivalent of FOM gave out a hand and the team is still there, and has been on the podium already. Cost-cutting matters? Teams, manufacturer and the ruling organizations all got together in a room, decided and held a press conference to announce the decisions. One of the cost-cutting measures was to diminish the 1-hour practice sessions to a 45 minutes; After 4 races, the pilots complained it wasn't enough - so everyone went into the same room again and came back having decided to go back to the 1-hour format.

How hard can it be?!

its not hard when the place isnt run by egos....
thats the problem with F1... every1 has a huge ego.... and loves power...

StoneColdSpider wrote:its not hard when the place isnt run by egos....
thats the problem with F1... every1 has a huge ego.... and loves power...

which is what killed CART........A series cannot be run by people who, ultimately, have only their own personal goals in mind.

There HAS to be ONE single person at the top, and he needs to have near absolute control.....Rule by committee DOES NOT work........

Fitch wrote:

StoneColdSpider wrote:its not hard when the place isnt run by egos....
thats the problem with F1... every1 has a huge ego.... and loves power...

which is what killed CART........A series cannot be run by people who, ultimately, have only their own personal goals in mind.

There HAS to be ONE single person at the top, and he needs to have near absolute control.....Rule by committee DOES NOT work........

You're referring back to John Locke's Leviathan theory, that predicted that a beneficent dictator could rule in a way that would make life better for everyone. I'm not buying it. Powers must be separated. I want to see a financial/economic commission looking at F1's economics and accounting, a sports commission, and a technical commission, all of them separated. I want the WMSC to be fully independent of the President, and to rule on proposals. F1 needs democracy, not a concentration of power. Checks and balances, that's what's missing right now.

DonTirri wrote:

Jordan192 wrote:

Pepys wrote:For better or worse, the manufacturers and their money own F1 and the drivers and fans will follow them. I don't think it will be hard for the combined power of FOTA to get some television contracts together, nor will it be impossible for them to get a schedule together.

I don't see how a series run by manufacturers would be any worse than the current system. Max is obviously a power-crazed loon and Bernie just wants money. F1 can't exist without large corporations, the days of actual privateer F1 are long gone and will never return.

The manufacturers don't own F1, they're just renting it. No series can support more than a couple of manufacturers in the long run because only one can win. Toyota and Renault were on the brink of leaving anyway, why would they have any reason to continue indefinitely with a series they're not winning in, or getting the right kind of exposure from?

Motorsport is privateer teams, and any category that forgets this, ends up crippled when the big manufacturers can't be bothered any more.

Also, don't forget the amounts of money we're talking about here - a €60-70 million a year (after engines) Formula 1 car will not be slow or low-tech by any stretch of the imagination.

I think I have a memory of a top level series which tried to focus its rules around manufuncturer teams and thought it could survive without privateer teams... now what was it called?

Oh right. World Sportscar championship. And guess what? It died after Privateers found themselves unable to compete in it due to the costs and manufuncturers who didn't have success left one after another.

So yeah, a series without privateers will eventually die a slow, drawnout death. FIA has learned its lesson, and when they try to prevent the same from happening to F1, they get all kinds of shite thrown at them and manufuncturers throw a fit.

FOTA series will die in 5 years max, while F1 will stay and live on.

See also: Can-Am

Fitch wrote:

StoneColdSpider wrote:its not hard when the place isnt run by egos....
thats the problem with F1... every1 has a huge ego.... and loves power...

There HAS to be ONE single person at the top, and he needs to have near absolute control.....Rule by committee DOES NOT work........

You know... History is FULL of examples of failed dictatorships (that IS what you are suggesting), and for the life of me I cannot remember a single succesfull dictatorship.

Lets quote a saying I once heard. "Absolute Power corrupts absolutely." Just doesn't work.

DonTirri wrote:

Fitch wrote:

StoneColdSpider wrote:its not hard when the place isnt run by egos....
thats the problem with F1... every1 has a huge ego.... and loves power...

There HAS to be ONE single person at the top, and he needs to have near absolute control.....Rule by committee DOES NOT work........

You know... History is FULL of examples of failed dictatorships (that IS what you are suggesting), and for the life of me I cannot remember a single succesfull dictatorship.

Lets quote a saying I once heard. "Absolute Power corrupts absolutely." Just doesn't work.

Rome under Augustus.

thehemogoblin wrote:
Rome under Augustus.

A man who tried it best to rule while making everyone else think he was sharing power.

DonTirri wrote:
I think I have a memory of a top level series which tried to focus its rules around manufuncturer teams and thought it could survive without privateer teams... now what was it called?

Oh right. World Sportscar championship. And guess what? It died after Privateers found themselves unable to compete in it due to the costs and manufuncturers who didn't have success left one after another.

I don't think that was really what happened to the WSC - essentially the change to the 3.5 NA litre engine formula which was supposedly a cost-saving measure (privateer teams could use "cheaper" engines based on F1 tech), that looks, in hindsight, like a transparent poly to move the manufacturers from WSC into F1 as engine suppliers (because they'd have been building something very close to an F1 engine anyway)- Which is what Peugeot and Mercedes did. effectively it died because of a rule change almost deliberately calculated to kill it.

The "golden years" of sportscar racing were those where it was specifically a championship intended for manufacturers. back in the 60s and 70s it was the "world championship of makes". Group C started from that point in 1982, though became almost a one-make porsche series through the mid-80s, until jaguar, then mercedes came on the scene. It did not help the category at all that Merc and Jag were unwilling to sell customer cars. and even in those years of manufacturer participation in Group C, one car was generally head and shoulders above the rest each year.

A succesful motorsport needs stability, and from the point of view of FOTA I can understand the anger that there's been a lack of that from the FIA in recent years. However it does seem unlikely that a FOTA series will be any better. manufacturers don't stay in championships so they can keep losing. and annoyingly, they sometimes don't stay after a long period of winning because it;s become, from a marketing perspective, boring (see honda's exit in the early 90s, and renault in the late 90s). maybe FOTA are relying on the new financial structure for the sport they'll put in place to make an F1 team, even an unsuccessful one, break even or make a profit, and that this will keep losing players in the game, but it seems unlikely.

I'm no fan of max, and think he's hugely mishandled this situation, but I do think his core point, that manufacturers can't be trusted to stick around, is valid. however it was him that got F1 into this situation in the first place, so it's a problem he's brought on the sport himself.