Liberty Media Group gets F1 acquisition anti-trust approval

MARCH 15, 2017

Liberty chief slams Azerbaijan race



A dark cloud has moved above the future of Azerbaijan's grand prix.

Under ousted F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone's leadership, a street circuit in the historic capital Baku made its debut on the calendar last year.

The Azerbaijan race is back for 2017, but it is now under fire from Greg Maffei, the chief executive of the sport's new owners Liberty Media.

He criticised the way Ecclestone used to select races for the calendar, saying that strategy was to say "'How much can I extract? How much upfront?

"So we end up with races in places like Azerbaijan where they paid us a big race fee but it does nothing to build the long-term brand and health of the business," Maffei is quoted by Forbes' F1 business journalist Christian Sylt.

"Our job is to find partners that pay us well but also help us to build the product," he added.

 

So.
Much.
Logic.

 

They are making all the right noises. Hope they follow through.

Buffett is a shareholder in Liberty so it's more than likely a well run company. And very recently Ferrari became the first one to take up Liberty's offer to the teams to buy into F1.

 

Liberty Media is John Malone. Possibly one of the smartest businessmen on the planet

 

Finally! Thank God someone in power gets it.

FU Jean Todt. Please, don't go away angry, just go away. You and your crappy ass team have single handedly ruined F1. How much value has been drained from the sport because of your lame ass ideas?

The sooner this loser gets the hell out the better.

-F

 

Azerbaijan, Korea, China, etc. How many crappy ass races does F1 have to put up with until is says ENOUGH!

What a ridiculous state of affairs F1 has become. F'em. They got themselves into this mess, they need to do the work to get out of it.

Bernie and Todt, the greatest wreckers of a sport known to man. Serves them right.

-F

 

MARCH 20, 2017

21 races the maximum for F1 says Brawn



Ross Brawn says there are enough races on the F1 calendar already.

When Liberty Media took over the sport, reports circulated that new chief executive Chase Carey saw potential on the schedule for 25 or more races.

Brawn, the new F1 sporting chief, agrees that some of the new races could be in America.

"I think so," he told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

"But the priority is the quality of the events. North America is important but so is Asia and Europe.

"How many races should we have? We must not inflate the calendar. 20-21 is the maximum. France will be back next year and perhaps Germany as well. And Monza is very important," Brawn added.

As for speculation F1 could rev up the 'show' by bringing back screaming normally-aspirated engines, Brawn insisted: "Unthinkable.

"However, we are thinking about the evolution of the hybrid engine."

Another option to spice up F1 would be to give Pirelli some competition from another tyre maker, but Brawn answered: "Competition is useful, but it's expensive.

"And Pirelli has done a great job -- it's too easy to criticise them. That said, we will analyse which tyres will be most suitable for the F1 we have in mind."

 

Are they forgetting the workload that would create for the teams?

Surely, competing worldwide in 21 (or plus) different countries doesn't give much time for the mechanics to turn the cars around between races, probably forcing the teams to have 2 sets of cars and 2 different teams of mechanics.

That would significantly increase their budget. Also, the staff is entitled to weekly rests, holidays, etc...

Plenty of races may work in NASCAR, but I think that with 20, they probably have already reached the limits in F1.

 

I would think about dropping some other races, before getting rid of China and Korea.

Both are car manufacturing countries, and China is maybe the biggest car market in the world!!

Countries that are irrelevant to F1, IMO, are Azerbijan, Hungary, Singapore, Malaysia, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain.

 

OK but...

When I look at the vast amounts of empty seats I say, something ain't right with this picture.

Versus those other places that seem to have good turnouts.

Personally I think Malaysia has established itself in the new era, even if at this point the facilities need some sprucing up.

-F

 

Unthinkable? Uh oh, someone's not thinking! Are these guys really that out of touch?

Or maybe he's just being coy as they work things out for the future.

-F

 

Maybe Ross Brawn thinks the idea of attracting manufacturers to an atmo F1 formula is just impossible.

Asking constructors who have spent millions in developing the hybrid formula to forget about it may prove to be a hard sale.

Jean Todt came to the same conclusion and was criticised for it.

 

Because he's the one that dreamed up/approved the rules in the first place.

 

I would guess that Jean Todt had consultations with many parties before deciding the hybrid formula, if in fact he did.
New formula usually don't come about following on man's vision, but are the result of discussions between the main participants.

 

You don't need NA for great sound. You need revs. More cylinders and revs helps even more.

 

2 facts:

Turbos act as mufflers and therefore reduce noise significantly.

Turbo engines tend to run at lower revs than atmospheric engine, because they work with counter-pressure in the exhaust system.

 

That is true.

If Brawn isn't going for NA engines (we'll never know but with his most recent statement lets go with ruling it out), IMO V8 would be great. Bump size up to 4 liters, hang a turbo each side of it and get going. Get rid of maximum fuel though just set max boost, simple as that. Simplify the engine some more by just having a simple KERS system not this hugely, unnecessary overcomplicated system to reduce cost.

https://youtu.be/am68lQsoNaI?t=122

Funnily enough this great sounding Sauber has a huge V8 turbo, 5 liters twin turbo and doesn't rev all that high (8000 only) but it sounds bloody fantastic.

 

Well, a NA engine format will attract some manufacturers, maybe not all manufacturers.

Besides, we have turbo engines now and who has F1 attracted? MB? Ok, fine. Honda? Not that great, we'll see how long that lasts. Kept Renault in the game? Maybe, they would probably be there without turbos as well.

Hey, constructors had spent millions developing NA engines up until a few years ago, that didn't stop the FIA from going to a completely new design.

As I'm sure you know, you have to attract manufacturers but also you have to appeal to the fans. F1 attracted MB and Honda. But they have also left many (most?) fans sour as well. That tells me they have gone too far in their desire to attract mainline manufacturers and they need to go to a different formula.

Perhaps "let a thousand flowers bloom" and open up the regs to NA and turbo engines, let each team decide. Ferrari has their path, MB and Honda have theirs. That might be the only way to allow these really different manufactures to play in the same game and give the fans something to cheer about.

In closing, the close mindedness shown by Brawn and Todt is very, very dangerous to an organization. That is how dinosaur industries get killed by the next best thing and F1 is not immune to that.

-F

 

Perhaps he listened too closely to some parties (MB, Honda?) and not enough to others (Ferrari, Renault?).

He certainly didn't listen to Bernie. Bernie tried to kill that will all he had. And for all the grief Bernie gets he's earned the right to say "I told you so!".

-F

 

That's my feeling as well. Todt wanted green cars, so certainly he was all ears to Mercedes and Renaults proposals. They drafted up the new engine formula, the only way it could be stopped was if all teams said ''no, we do not want this''. That was never going to happen with Mercedes and Renault already committed to this so rules went ahead.

Bernie has done things wrong but gets unnecessary blame for things that are **** all to do with him, such as these engine regs. Both he and Ferrari said it was totally the wrong direction, they'd sound ****, be very expensive and most fans wouldn't like them. They where 100% right, and like you say...they can only say ''I told you so''.

Only 4 engines per car per season yet they costs an outrageous 20 million per season! Teams do less running in fear of lunching an engine so for the people paying good money to watch friday-sunday, we just don't see the cars all that much. Even if the teams WANT to drive their cars, they're so limited on mileage. It's ridiculous. Early 2000s when V10s where being developed at every weekend almost, an engine cost between €180-250k pending the manufacturer. At that rate, we could have a new engine per car every weekend and still spend only HALF what these stupid hybrids cost. It's madness. These hybrid engines where supposed to be a lot cheaper that's why the small teams voted along for them, but cost more than doubled. It's bankrupted teams. When teams like Sauber with over 100 million budget can't make ends meet...what the **** are we doing here?

Again I read that we need these engines because manufacturers are interested. But they're not. None of the big manufacturers have expressed any kind of interest saying ''oh, F1 has gone hybrid, let's go join them''. Honda joined because of their history with Mclaren. That's gone well.

 

Just go back and listen to the turbo motors of the 80s and 90s man. They sounded great and revved pretty high.

 

Agreed.

But even the MP4/4 which was a v6 turbo sounded so much better than these.

 

Exactly.

1986 Williams-Honda FW11 Turbo (1500 cc) - 1400 BHP @ 12000 RPM.

Turbocharging was banned from 1989 with NA engines limited to 3500 cc.

 

What the heck are "we" doing here? Green technology? Give me a freakin' break! How much carbon is burned every season just moving the circus from one continent to the other? But, but, but, the engines are really green!!! Foolishness on stilts!

BINGO!

Hey, give them credit for trying but in the end, it was a miscalculation. All you got was MB, but what did you loose in the process? (How many viewers have dropped off over the last couple of years? Is it in the millions?)

And besides, haven't these PU's proven to be incredibly expensive?

-F