Interesting take on the situation of the series and its owners.... http://planetf1.com/news/3213/6930332/Ferrari-Boss-Breakaway-On-The-Cards
i remember the break away series they were proposing several years back looked pretty promising. anything to prevent f1 cars from running 4 cylinder engines.
With regularity, this business of F1 rival series comes up. This time it's LdM that kickstarts the idea, once more. I don't know what's his angle from a commercial point of view; LdM says that CVC doesn't own F1 at the end of the year, and maybe he has in mind a different distribution of TV rights. On the technical point of view, I tend to agree with him. The new regulations introduced to artifically spice up the races, have gone to far and transformed F1 in some sort of PlayStation gimmick. This business about the DRS activation being dictated by the FIA, telling drivers where they can overtake is frankly a joke. He is right, in my book at least, about that plethora of pit stops (80 during the last GP said LdM) and the clever tactics about degrading tyres. That's not racing. If new technology is allowed (DRS, KERS), at least let the teams/drivers to use them as they see fit. Also, why impose tyre degradation? Different tyres (soft/hard) ? Does that serve any purpose? F1 car should really be able to race 200 miles or 2 hours without any stop of any kind (imposed or not). People come to see a race between drivers, not a competition among pit crews or a contest about the best computer boffin/race tactician.
There is some fantastic insight into Luca Di Mozzarella in both of Bernie's biographies. Luca is a good negotiator, but Bernie is a master negotiator. Luca is just negotiating. He says Bernie/CVC owns nothing, which is patently false. The teams are one half of the equation. The tracks and TV companies are the other - and Bernie wisely has them locked up in contracts that end at various different times. I thought a breakaway series was a possibility before. I even argued with Andreas over it. But Andreas knew way more about the reality of the situation than I did, and he was right. Having the teams run F1 would be like having a couple of foxes and a bunch of chickens run dinnertime.
I didn't realize Bernie has sold the series 3 times. Intersting. F1 took a turn fo the worse when Bernie sold to Kirch (then CVC). At that poInt it was all about chasin money to satisfy the debt.....
+1 The CVC bought the Formula One business cheaply in 2005 (getting control for 1.2 billion) and have since made double that in profits. Lets be clear about it, money talks and if the CVC want to sell they will. I also think Luca is sticking his nose in this business, and showing his arm as there are bigger things at stake, as in who will end up owning F1.
I guess that, in theory, all the teams could quit F1 and form a league of their own but, despite their bluff, they showed no real interest in doing that when the Mosley wars were on and I can't see them doing it now. Bernie does what Bernie does better than anyone else. He makes huge sums of money for the teams. Luca has a conflict of interest in that the prospective buyer is partly Fiat owned and dollars to donuts he sees himself as the new Supremo. I don't see this as an attractive option for the other teams. "Let's drop a proven winner and replace him with one of our competitors". Don't see that idea going anywhere.
+1 As already noted, one "issue" they'll have to overcome is availability of suitable tracks - IIRC, last time thru' the FIA said they'd pull the licenses from any tracks that went with any breakaway series..... [A track is free to do what it wants of course, but hosting only a single race per year is not good for their business.] Further, F1 has "history" which any breakaway series couldn't leverage. Luca is bluffing - It can't work. However, what he (and the others) really want is a bigger slice of the pie when they re-do the Concorde agreement and this bluff *may* give them some additional leverage. Cheers, Ian
The second article makes it sound as if the breakaway series wouldn't have any tracks to run on. Well... what about the tracks that were dropped by F1? They aren't in any contractual obligations, so a breakaway series would be perfectly able to negotiate a race in those locations. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but I'm not sure that a breakaway series could steal the audience away from F1 even if it ends up being a more reflective reincarnation of how F1 used to be than the convoluted regulations that F1 of tomorrow will likely have. All the best, Andrew.
The reason that a breakaway cannot happen is that the teams, including Ferrari, have agreed (contractually) not to organise an alternative championship until before December 31 2012, while Bernie Ecclestone (on behalf of CVC) has agreed not to make individual teams individual offers prior to the end of December 2012. Both parties have agreed to use “reasonable endeavours” to agree upon an extension of the Concorde Agreement. The other reason why Montezemolo might wish to evoke a breakaway is that it raises the stakes and potentially brings down the value of the company, which means that it would be cheaper for Murdoch-Exor to purchase the business. In short, the message being delivered here is that the longer this goes on the less value the business has and so it would be wise for CVC to take the money and run… The reality is that Montezemolo would be wise to be in support of the Murdoch-Exor bid because it is being organised by his boss John Elkann ... From a JS blog. It's sounding to me like a complicated game of chess is brewing, however why would FOTA agree to F1 to be taken over by someone with Ferrari links. Bernie may be old but he still wrap em up in knots.
