F1 is not the king. We are not FIA fans... The teams and the drivers are the show. That is why I am not the least bit worried that F1 is dead. I will go where the teams and drivers go and I don't care what they call it. I have had enough of Max and Bernie, if killing F1 and starting a new series gets rid of them that is fine with me. The teams are not going to back down and Max and Bernie can not back down. A new series is the only option. I don't think it would cost much or be that complicated to start one. They could even buy a series if need be. They can just use the 2009 rules so that teams don't have to change much for next year. BTW this was posted in one of the other threads and it is a good read. The more things change... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISA-FOCA_war Thoughts?
This is an interesting article. http://www.thestar.com/sports/article/650873 Rival series would fix F1 for good AP FILE PHOTO Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo after a meeting of the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) in Monaco on Friday, May 22, 2009. Series of breakaway Grand Prix races would force FIA's Max Mosley to finally step aside June 15, 2009 NORRIS MCDONALD MOTORSPORT WRITER Although there won't be a Grand Prix until next weekend, the most significant motorsport event of last weekend involved Formula One and the threat to create a breakaway series. Yes, the 24 Hours of Le Mans was held (Peugeot won), Andrew Ranger won the NASCAR Canadian Tire race at Mosport and Mark Martin won a dramatic NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Michigan, but Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo's almost-declaration of war against FIA president Max Mosley trumps everything else. Insurrections against FIA presidents are nothing new. Mosley became president in 1993 after Jean-Marie Balestre was forced to step down. Balestre did many good things for motorsport but there were suspicions that he rigged the result of the 1989 world championship in favour of his countryman, Alain Prost, and by the early 1990s he was acting strangely. He was personally authorizing paddock and pit passes for beauty queens on roller skates, not to mention the toy poodles they carried, and people were wondering aloud if he was losing his mind.. In short, he became an embarrassment and had to go. It's now 2009 and Mosley has turned into Balestre. He has obviously decided that the best way to salvage his tattered reputation is to show the world how tough and powerful a man he really is despite those shortcomings. So he's done everything possible to upset the established Formula One teams, from manipulating technical regulations (hello, double diffusers) to imposing a cap on spending. On the surface, the cap might look reasonable considering the recession, but internally it's unacceptable because a prerequisite of involvement in Formula One is the ability to attract, and subsequently spend, huge amounts of money. Ferrari and the other "old guard" teams recently formed a new organization called the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) to represent the teams in dealing with the FIA. FOTA has since kicked out two of its members Williams and Force India because they submitted entries for the 2010 world championship after the organization had decided against it. Then, last Friday, the FIA released a list of 2010 entries, which included some new teams but listed Ferrari, McLaren, et al, as being "provisional." Di Montezemolo hit the roof over that one, because FOTA had specifically warned the FIA against doing just that. So the Ferrari president once again brought up the possibility of a breakaway series and Mosley said, in so many words: "Go ahead. In fact, I double-dare you." So there the matter sits. FOTA has asked the World Motorsport Council to get involved. F1 guru Bernie Ecclestone is asking everybody to please calm down. And I say this: If Mosley won't back down, FOTA should run its own series. The way things stand now, F1 will not be back to North America any time soon. But a breakaway Grand Prix series sure would. Montreal and Indianapolis would be back on the calendar lickety-split and nothing but good would come of that. And despite what some people are suggesting, this would not turn into a long-standing CART-IRL spat. Within a year, maybe two at the most, Mosley would be forced to resign and whoever the new FIA leader turns out to be would very quickly get everybody back on the same page. Mosley would be gone and Montreal would be back on the calendar. Who could argue against that?
I remember when Niki Lauda was given his last rights. Then, what, less than two months later he was back in the race car. I don't think F1 is dead at all. Its going through a mid life crisis, but with counseling it will come out better than before. You are giving F1 its last rights way too early. Just like Lauda, it will come back as F1 with better implemented rules, and tighter budgets.
F1 has been dead for a few years and the more they change the budgets and rules the deader it gets. Lets get on with another series. F1 IS DEAD!
...let's all try and remember the Indy/IRL split...and how 'successful' that was in helping open wheel racing in the US...! Although i'm sick of the politics, Max is the big villain in this piece and he needs to go. A split series would set back F1 a decade or more before they would sort it out again. No one wants that.
If F1 is not going to be the technology king any more than I say screw it. Ferrari should focus on ALMS and Le Mans in my opinion. Use racing to get technolgy on the road cars. That is what F1 is about and it sounds like to me that isn't going to happen as much for awhile so use ALMS and Le Mans for that.
I have a great photo that I will post when I get a chance. I took it at Le Mans on Saturday. The guy was all in red(head/face too) carrying a pole with a checkered flag with a F1 RIP flag!! Loved it. F1 is a joke in my book and becoming even moreso. The technology is not in the F1 cars, it's it the sports cars. Carol
Funny. One of the biggest problems in life and in F1 is the middleman. Berney and Max have long out lived their purpose. The whole idea was to have someone line things up and make sure the races were ready to go way in advance. The problem here in F1 is that these two seem to have gotten bigger than F1 itself. They make more money than anyone and thats not what it was supposed to be about. Its just like the farmer. He sells a bushel of whatever for $2.00 but we end up paying 10 times that. Who made the big profit? It should have been the farmer. In F1 the tracks make nothing. The cities in many cases take a loss to host the event so that the money being brought into the city is spread around to local business. Most of the ticket money goes to the 2 Idiots that are causing all this grief. This is why Montreal can no longer afford the ransom asked to run the race there. These guys are all about greed. The money made should go to the local organizers and the teams with the middle men like Berney and Max getting paid a nice salary period. But instead they are making 100s of millions of dollars.....Maybe they should put a cap on how much they make and the rest goes back to the teams in the way of prize money.......Ops...isnt that the way it used to be?
Mr Lauda mouth has been spewing BS for a long time.....It amazes me how some choose to listen to him when its convenient.
Bernie threatened to sue if they approached any of the circuits and tv people that F1 uses, but since he's dropping so many of the old circuits that leaves a lot of classic venues for the FOTA series to race at. They already have teams, cars, drivers and sponsors so all they need is to organise are circuits to race at (pretty easy), tv rights (again, probably not too hard given most countries have more than one TV channel) and some rules (surely just carrying forward the 2009 rules would be sensible). The fans will follow the teams and with FOTA in control of the show the teams will get a fair split of the revenue, which will make it much more attractive for new teams that want to join. I think they have the big names on board that could carry an audience with them to a new series. I would love to see Ferrari back as a factory team in ALMS, LMS and Le Mans though, but I can't see them abandoning single seaters altogether.
I do not see Bernie and Max being in this together right now. Surprisingly Max seems to be in position to keep his job, at least for the present. How can FIA back him up and then fire him? And, he looks like a traitor if he doesn't stick around and try to make F1 work with the new teams. Bernie, on the other hand, has to try to make money with a crippled field. Today's events make this whole thing very strange. That being the removal of Ferrari, Toyota, and Red Bull from the entry list as of Friday. This would seem to make Bernie's case against holding them to a contract weaker. Maybe the lawyers have already decided that Bernie can't hold onto them. The best thing that could happen for the sport fan, in my opinion, is for there to be a new series and F1 to survive. There is really nothing wrong with what FIA is trying to do, it just isn't what F1 has been about (but they get to keep the name), and in the process the major teams get shafted. A new series (if it actually happens) is just like some people in a company coming up with a great new idea that the top people don't back so the idea people leave and start a new company. The difference here is that it is the new idea folks that are staying, and the traditional folks that are leaving, if this plays out the way it seems to be headed. I do not see FOTA actually running a new series, too much trouble and potential for conflicts of interest. They will hire someone to put the series together and make sure they don't create another Bernie in the process. FOTA will have a lot of power, but will have to be careful not to put themselves into a situation where they are warring amongst themselves constantly.
Comments: - F1 is the king of motorsports. By several definitions. My favorite is that they are the fastest cars around a road course. Others are the FIA regulations themselves, which assure that no other racing series will beat them. You can think otherwise, but you're simply wrong. - Your title is wrong too: F1 is alive and well and will continue to prosper for many years to come. - It is insanely difficult to put a new series together. And in all reality it is impossible because * the egoistical team managers will never agree on a rule set * the egoistical team managers will never agree on the distribution of the TV money * all major tracks and TV rights are already owned by Bernie * it will simply cost twice the current F1 budgets to put this together, which the car companies will never pay * there is not enough time - A compromise solution will be found eventually. It might cost Max' head (good thing), but it will be found. Because it has always been found. In the past 60 years. Money will be driving force and overrule everything else.
The point I was making is that the term "F1" is not the king, the F1 Teams and Drivers are. So we are in agreement there. I think 2009 is the last "real" year for F1 and in 2010 it will be a shadow of its former self. All of the team owners and car makers have had enough of Max telling them what to do and Bernie taking half of their money. They will agree because the one thing that bonds them is that they are fed up with the current state and anything is better than this. Bernie does not own "all of the tracks and TV companies". Need I remind you that they added 2 temporary street circuits last year. How hard would it be to come up with a few more of those and some of the circuits that Bernie has cast aside over the last few years. As for TV companies, there are loads that would kill to get a shot at putting this show on TV. How can it cost twice the current budgets to do this? Making a race series is not that complicated and if they can save the Billion or so that Bernie's company pulls out every year that should easily pay for it. As for the time, who says they have to start the season in March? Why don't they just start next June? That gives them a year and it should be more than enough time. They also don't need to have 17 or 18 races in the first year, I think 10-12 would be great. This is their chance to fix things and they may not have another one for another 25 years. The King is dead, long live the King...
Yes They never agreed on anything substantial in the past. They won't going forward. People don't change. True. There are enough racetracks around the world to cover the calendar. However the real question is: What risks are you willing to take? Sure you can run your break-away series at Brands Hatch (great history), but it is not up to standards: Neither from a safety perspective nor from a visitor's comfort zone, which is important if you want to get $$$ from ticket sales. Yes, you can turn many cities into street races, but how attractive and safe will they be? That was Lauda's estimate. A man who not only won 3 F1 titles, but was a F1 team manager, a consultant to the Scuderia and successful business man running his own airline company. He probably knows a thing or two about costs. PS: Don't get me wrong: I hate Mad Max and Bernie and would nothing more than to see them gone. But the break-away series is not the answer and will never happen. It is a pipe dream for all the arguments shown. If you don't believe me, look up what happened in 1982. And in those days things were a lot cheaper, a lot less at stake, a lot less political, yet they didn't last long. PPS: If you still think a break-away series is a great idea: IRL and Champ cars might give you some pointers. Or professional boxing.
I hear a little circuit called Sliver something or other might be available and I think they might let them use it on the cheap There is a "Sliverstone" in just about every country that Bernie has abused over the last few years and they would love to help a new series. I think the difference here is that this could work because all of the big teams are united so the series could move as an intact unit and take 100% of the fan base with it.
And you know for a fact that all these tracks have no contractual obligations with Bernie? Don't underestimate the evil dwarf. What makes you think they are united? Because they filed a common press release? They have a common enemy with Max right now. So what? It is a lot easier to bond in hating somebody than to bond in creating something. Just look at the Middle East.
I don't see a problem with this.... F1 isn't dead, it just isn't F1 as we knew it, just like nascar isn't 'real' racing anymore, with rules so tight even the washers and bolts you use must be 'approved' or you get a STIFF fine. Bah! to that.
Ferrari is F1, wherever Ferrari goes will be the 'F1', even if they don't call it that. Which makes us wonder, what would they call a new series ?
The Ferrari AutoFellatio Series. Or, Brüno. Ferrari is not F1. The sport is bigger than any one team, no matter who's at the helm.
