seems the beancounters have figured out losing doesn't have a negative effect on sales. therefore why waste untold millions developing a car when you can pay for a big name pilot to tool around the track and reap the savings. if ferrari never won another race the fan base would still be enormous and they still would sell all the cars they can produce.
Well stated and good points. I agree he is angling for a lifting of the engine freeze. Why shouldn't he? They cannot close the gap with the under-powered unit pushing the car presently.
When I was a kid in the 60's I fell in love with Grand Prix racing. When I first heard that Ferrari was threatening to leave Formula One I was surprised. I've been waiting a long time...Glad it hasn't happened.
What I meant by "involved" is less of the button pushing in the cockpit and more of driving the car. The work load is stupendous for these guys. Yes, they have lots of torque and they are getting the back end stepping out a bit but nothing like the drifting in the video I posted. I guess what I am alluding to is backing off on the Buck Rogers stuff and building more of a straight forward car. I could care less about fuel consumption and being "green". You might as well put them all in a turbo Prius.....
LdM is right to try to get the engines unfrozen....... I bet every other manufacturer feels the same, but let Luca do the damage for them.... As I figured out back at the start of the season, with such a massive performance gap between merc and the rest, it will be impossible for any team to actually catch up performance wise with Mercedes, title was over as soon as aus ended. The only thing what could effect them winning is reliability now, and this would have to put both cars out several times to make the slightest chance of excitement in either championship. Yes, everyone thinks the odd bit of racing drama means F1 is cured, but it isn't, it's only ever the odd race. How many of us long term fans that previously wouldn't dare leave the TV for a leak during the race now sit there with one eye almost at the TV, and the other reading, making stuff, ironing, making calls etc. I know I have been. My life use to stop for every session, blinds closed, TV and sound on full blast, laptops running telemetry, and phones switched off regardless of the rest of the world. Now I rarely bother with practices, watch qualifying whilst catching up with work, ironing etc, and only pay attention for the f-cars runs and actually find myself accepting of whatever the order we find ourselves in, who cares, it's a merc win unless they explode. For the race, I watch less and less of the buildup, and during the race, tend to actually concentrate only when there are stops that might cause issues, and couldn't tell you the race order at the end of any of this years races, save that a merc one each, and mostly came second too. This year my father in law wants to go the Italian GP as he's never been to any, and I've always kept on at him about how great monza is. Guess what I can't believe things are so bad, but as I feel embarrassed of the sport these days, I declined the offer to go, and advised him he might be better spending his money on motoGP or anything else. F1 is not the fanfare crescendo of noise and excitement it once was, and I think it's lost it's edge over other series as a result
LdM does this at least once every 2 years. Whenever he hasn't won for a while he starts throwing his toys out of the pram by saying he's going to quit F1 and fail somewhere else. I think right now IS actually a perfect time to leave F1. F1 is a sinking ship currently. F1 pays Ferrari to be there, regardless of how well (or ****) they're doing. They say that this is because F1 ceases to exist without Ferrari. I have no doubt that when F1 falls, a new series will be up and ready for the next season with more or less all the current top 5 teams and drivers. Perhaps Ferrari should show how big their balls are and simply leave. If F1 does implode, as Ferrari seem damn sure of if they leave, it might all be for the better.
Exactly. I could care less if Ferrari leaves. Not my decision nor does it matter in life. If they want to leave I will watch other racing forms. No loss.
It would be great for the sport if Ferrari leaves. More money for the other teams would be great news. Anyone who thinks f1 needs Ferrari to survive is being naive.
F1 technology used to be benificial to mass production cars-not so much anymore because the car industry is fully able to provide it on its own. Ferrari F1 was the legacy of one passionate man & now it is a marketing tool of a conglomerate who must provide profitability to their shareholders. Ferrari intend to restrict its car production to about 7000 unit per year and compensate with more aggressive merchandising so F1 with its almost irrelevant technology and outragious cost will have no further justification. Chances are that Ferrari will be just another competitor to Lamborghini and that would be a crying shame.
You mean they compete in preservation racing: Tires, fuel etc etc. We are the one's 'enduring' the so called 'show'
+1 Ferrari are more about the brand power now then anything else, evidence is with the chain of theme parks in the works. Forced induction destroyed F1 and will dull out the road cars as well. The green lobby did what it wanted to do.
Read an article yesterday that compared Ferrari leaving F-1 to Manchester United leaving soccer and starting a basketball team. Could Ferrari do both F-1 and sports cars? If they really wanted to and with a designated entrant like AF Corse, yes. But, like everyone already knows, this is all posturing by de Montemezolo to get the changes he wants. This annual tradition dangling Ferrari into the sports car mix is becoming tiresome. BHW
I'd like to see Ferrari in sports car racing like the old days. But I don't think LdM could pull it off the way Enzo did. Wasn't the F50 created simply to homologate the engine they'd used in racing earlier? (Enzo pulling a shell game.) But the world has changed. In the past, racing gave us lovely homologation machines like the F50, the Lancia Stratos, the Toyota GT-Four, and the EVO. But today, we have a world under the shadow of political correctness, with everyone building hybrids and electrics, even knowing that they make no engineering sense, when compared against the purpose of motor vehicles (as opposed to the political issues). FIA is trying to keep F1 alive in a world where school children are indoctrinated with the "carbon is bad" mantra, government button sorters figure that it's too lax to let people drive "state to state, no papers", and you could sell a box of rocks if you called it "iFone 6", because "new is better". I'm not sure the approach of following the "official lies" is going to save F1. Especially with the racing in F1 overshadowed by arbitrary micro-management "rules" to "improve the show" with artificial (and often meaningless) passes through intermittent handicaps such as different tire compounds or DRS "push to pass". E.g. tire "allocations". Changing tires already carries a 20+ second pit "penalty". Let 'em use eight sets of options, if they think that will be enough faster than two sets of primes to overcome six more pit stops. Would they even need such silly rules if the car development wasn't frozen all year? (Besides: where do the test drivers get experience, if testing is banned?) Most of the "cost savings" rules were imposed by Mad Max, to keep the obsequious "little" teams from being overshadowed, in a "manufacturers' series", by companies that actually manufactured cars. Of course, this news is just LdM whinging about a season where Ferrari got blown past by the driver they fired.
Ferrari should pull out F1 offer them nothing from a development point of view, the offers the fans nothing from an excitement point of view and lets be honest why chase "green" when the airlines that transport them produce more C02 than the cars do all year. Misguided are what these current regulations are, bring back testing for a start and bring back some creativity to the design process.
Its great to see how Ferrari respects marque traditions. Threatening to take their ball home is one of the oldest.
Not gonna happen. Ferrari knows F1 is the most important Motorsport. Everything else is minor leagues without cachet.
The problem is not Massa, or Domenicalli or the rules or the engine development freeze or the lack of testing. The problem is Luca.... The organization has gone off the rails and the problem is the leadership. Stefano was not the disease. He was just the symptom. I am grateful to LDM for all his hard work and without him Ferrari would have ceased to exist a long time ago. However it's time for a change. Fresh leadership. Ferrari has become one person's opinion. That persons opinion makes no sense anymore. We will quit f1 in 2020.. It's become too green too many limitations. Well then why are you the one allowing the marketing guys to stick hybrid f1 technology on the new generation of Ferraris. If LDM thinks that it's not the future of the sport then why use the boring stuff as a selling point for the cars. Either the cars can't be sold without the f1 technology catch or your just making excuses for the performance of the team. Either way you are up the creek without a paddle. So keep building the amusement parks and hotels because pretty soon when the kids don't want the Ferrari caps and Tshirts it's all going to end in a hurry and it won't be pretty when it ends.
F1 is completely and utterly irrelevant to road car development and it remains to be seen what will happen to the organization once Bernie retires. I'd much rather see Ferrari(and everyone else) race in LMP and sport cars.
