FIA and FOTA find an agreement!

Yep I go along with Zat!!

 

Please Dave...do not give Steve any photoshop ideas! That's a picture I do not want to see!!

 

If he didn't have that idea before be sure he does now!
You have only yourself to blame

 

Your tempting me Clint.. but I can't stand even looking at him for that long, I fear I may spew up on my key board..

 

Aw c'mon think Michaelangelo's Adam from the Sistine Chapel I leave it to you who should play Eve

 

I think that battle was just put off for another day.

The teams agreed to run under the 1998 Concorde agreement, and they will get a new agreement done by, IIRC, the time their new contracts run out in '12. So they have stability for now, and there is ~2 years left before the final showdown with Bernie, if he's even still alive by then.

 

I was actually hoping for this beakaway to see a new start, and mainly to get rid of these "harvester" cars.I could understand using them for the first season of the breakaway for lack-of-time reasons.Another alternative is to use the 2008-spec cars until new regulations are made.Nothing I can do about it though.

 

Yes ..agreed. Today 3 guys went into a room one came out without a job!! result IMO.

 

Oops...you mean that wasn't a pm I sent you??

 

Thank goodness!

 

Er, uh, no.

 

David, Good post. Bernies next in line for the FOTA hammer. Max was Bernie's key tool in keeping things under his control and now that Max is gone we'll see how Concorde gets resolved(I bet to the satisfaction of FOTA). Keep in mind the FIA has been served noltice here that FOTA means business, so Bernie now finds himself behind the eight ball and not in front of it anymore. I think todays revelations indeed reflect a drastic shift in the power structure of F1. I think it's going to be interesting to see how Max and Bernie spin this whole thing, and how Max and Bernie's relationship goes from here on out...........That all being said, FOTA now has a responsibility to the fans to follow through with their side of the rhetoric and give the fans a great product at a fair price......we'll see if they meant what they've been saying!

 

I won't hold my breath.
The teams and Bernie will reach an agreement if Bernie has enough money to redistribute after his big debt service costs. They respect him and his ability to make them rich in a way they never respected Max and his ways of making them poorer by way of his capricious rule changes.
As far as the fan interests are concerned we may need a Formula One Fan Association (FOFA) to exercise our interests.

 

Yes a good post from Mr Dave he just gets/understands my babble and put's it in plain English...

Good stuff from yourself as well..


Er ..Dave I nominate you the head of FOFA..

 

I'd never lead a club that would have me as a member

 

I'm still not sure that in this day and age, especially with the very long and deep connections the powers at FOTA have, they actually believe that Bernie is still the man when it comes to making them money. I think they actually believe they can make more money if they control the whole mess themselves. They will only work something out if they get ENOUGH, it's just easier all the way around. But if they don't, we might have a lot to banter about down the road with Concorde?

 

To be sure.
The teams, if they are smart, will stick to what they do best and that's not promoting and organizing.
As Dr. Porsche was said to have said "Shoemaker stick to your last".

 

Putting off the fight to another day was a big win for Bernie. If one is faced with a loss, parlaying for time is always a winning move. Who knew Bernie played chess?

Bernie wins by virtue of the fact that he is servicing 2007 debt with 2009 dollars, and will be servicing it with 20012 dollars before he has to actually work out a deal with FOTA. And like you said, the teams speak Bernies language. He's made the money - lots of it, and that is a fight over percentages and fees, not a fundamental difference in how business should be conducted. Bernie can also hold hope that this global recession will be over or at least largely over by 2012, and while he will stick to his guns in negotiations with the TV stations and tracks under the premise of having a full (even an expanded) grid for '10, he will also be looking to raise his fees for these folks when their contracts renew.

And possibly his icing on the cake would be that he has contracts for races now, but if he can get the teams to expand the calendar by maybe 2 races, that's an extra $200mm or so in his pocket. He can create a "win/win" by bringing back the USA and Canada, help his bottom line, and make himself look like a giver to the fans.

But I'm sure Bernie realizes deep down that the FOTA teams have felt their oats, and have absolultely no doubt about the power they wield from this point on.

The next few years should be very interesting indeed. I hope Bernie lives to see 90, just so I can witness the fireworks as they happen.

 

True, But let's not forget these are NOT the teams of the past. These are major manufacturers who have a lot of experience in marketing, promotion and all the tools used in such(ie TV), so for them this is really not that big of deal really. If Bernie Eclestone can make it happen, don't you think they think they can collectively make it happen?..... I think they do. If they get enough money and control from Bernie, then great, if not, well maybe they will need to rethink their position? Maybe, we'll see. I have a feeling that all is not done just yet........

 

I'm of two minds when it comes to Bernie. As a fan I deeply resent a lot of what he's done. As a businessman I respect the He11 out of him.

 

Since I'm a little late to this thread, let me just congratulate the female workers of Chelsea to their new found opportunities in business come fall.

 

Oh it's not over by a long shot.
Bernie not only has a proven track record but as an individual actor he's more effective than a group of teams with different situations and goals would be.

 

LOL ... and on that note I'm off to bed...

 

One more tidbit of info concerning the showdown:

From The [London] Times:

Max Mosley: ousted in a coup led by his old friend Bernie Ecclestone
Edward Gorman, Motor Racing Correspondent

The tumultuous reign of Max Mosley as president of motor racing’s governing body came to an abrupt end yesterday when he was unceremoniously stripped of his power in a coup led by his old friend Bernie Ecclestone.

In a dramatic confrontation at the Paris headqarters of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Mr Ecclestone, 79, the billionaire promoter of Formula One, told Mr Mosley that his time was up. The autocrat who had reduced the pinnacle championship in world motorsport to chaos was gone.

In a deal that Mr Mosley, 69, tried to present as a personal triumph, he was removed from all influence over Formula One with immediate effect. Not only will he now not stand for re-election for a fourth term as FIA president in October, he will no longer run the sport from this morning, and he will not assume any other role in the FIA from which he could continue to influence affairs.

Mr Mosley had gone to Paris talking tough and making it clear that he might continue bossing one of the world’s richest sports for another four years. By mid-morning his 16-year reign was over and though he remains in office, he is without power.
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Thus, in the end, it was not the disclosures in a Sunday newspaper last year about his appetite for sadomasochistic umpalumpa with prostitutes that brought him down but the confrontational way in which he was trying to run Formula One.

This had provoked a wholesale revolt by the teams against his rule. They were opposed to his attempt to impose a cap on their spending and they had made it clear that if he did not go, they would abandon Formula One and start a rival championship.

This provoked a severe case of the jitters in Mr Ecclestone and in the venture capital company he works for which owns 75 per cent of Formula One — CVC Capital Partners — and they decided that Mr Mosley would have to pay the price for his miscalculation.

His fall comes at the end of 16 months in the life of the son of the wartime Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, that has tested him to the limit. In March last year the News of the World published photographs of him taking part in an orgy with five prostitutes in a London “torture dungeon”. He then had to explain himself to Jean, his wife of 40 years, and to his two sons, Alexander and Patrick, neither of whom had any idea of his secret passion.

After resolutely refusing to stand down over what he argued was an entirely private matter, Mr Mosley fought back, leading a crusade for change in British privacy laws and reasserting his authority at the FIA. Then last month Alexander Mosley, who was a heroin addict, was found dead at his London flat after taking a drug overdose.

Through it all Mr Mosley had seemed almost bullet-proof and had tried to continue running motor sport in his own very particular style, barely taking time off even in the days after his son’s death. He appeared to see himself as unimpeachable.

His enemies, and they were legion among the teams taking part in Formula One, saw him as a dictator who imposed his will without consultation, who constantly changed the rules and who delighted in attacking those who tried to challenge him. He infamously ridiculed Sir Jackie Stewart, for example, an outspoken critic and a dyslexic, as a “certified half-wit” and only last weekend dismissed team leaders opposed to him as “loonies”. He was instrumental in ending the career of Ron Dennis, the former team principal of Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren Mercedes, and handing that team a world record fine of £50 million for cheating in 2007.

Mr Mosley’s view was that the teams were mere “garagists”, a bunch of self-important upstarts who should be treated with disdain bordering on contempt. He revelled in his role as supreme authority over Formula One and he put huge effort into building his powerbase within the FIA to ensure that he could not be deposed. Not content merely to administer the sport, Mr Mosley was a constant presence behind the scenes, manipulating and plotting and litigating against those who attacked him.

He “worked” the Formula One media and his personal spin-doctor, Richard Woods, was tireless in the pursuit of Mr Mosley’s interests.

Mr Mosley did not work alone. He was very much a part of a double act with Mr Ecclestone, something known within the Formula One paddock as the “Max and Bernie show”. Having become friends in the 1960s, when they were both involved in motorsport as not-very-good drivers and then team owners, they proved a formidable partnership. Mr Ecclestone applied his skills as promoter and Mr Mosley as lawyer and then rules chief after becoming FIA president in 1993. The relationship was far too close for many in the sport’s liking.

A feature of their hegemony was their extraordinary ability to extricate themselves from even the most apocalyptic of crises. A deal was always pulled out of the fire or opponents were persuaded to change their minds in spectacular fashion. Ferrari, for example, was famously lured away from a previous threatened breakaway by a deal under which the Italian team now earns more than any other in Formula One and gets more money for winning than any other team. In the end Max and Bernie always seemed to win.

Mr Mosley wanted to restrict teams to a basic budget of £30 million a year. But even though he allowed his initially simple and ambitious goal to be watered down in response to the objections of the teams, he seemed to be getting nowhere. It became clear that the teams led by an old foe, the president of Ferrari, Luca di Montezemolo, had had enough of him. Even though they wanted to cut spending themselves, they did not want any scheme that gave Mr Mosley a say in how they were running their businesses. They did not trust him. As one team principal put it: “We never want to be at the mercy of Max.”

The teams had one trump card up their sleeve and they played it beautifully — a breakaway series. When eight of the ten outfits on the Formula One grid announced their intention to set up a rival championship, Mr Mosley was in trouble. The breakaway included all the most famous names — teams and drivers — and Mr Ecclestone and CVC Capital could see that it was either a case of “Max goes”, or “Formula One falls to pieces”.

In the end Mr Ecclestone chose saving the sport over standing by his old mucker.

 

FOTA cave's in! Geeze...how disappointing.