Formula 1 - 2009 Season
- Thread starter Dave Baumann
- Start date
I am fairly positive the Crown Prince already alluded that he would stage 2 races if need be (although he hoped a solution would be found) during a BBC interview.
I know he's said that Ferrari is important for them.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Wont understand? How hard can it be. Max + Bernie got to greedy. Teams say screw you and start their own championship under a slightly different name. Nobody will care because formula new will have all the big F1 names and at the end of the day nobody will give a crap if they are turning their tv on at 2pm and watch Ferrari, mclaren etc in F1 or watch them running in Formula new.
I dont think contracting tracks is a really big deal. If its true that the FOTA wants to make things better for the track operators hosting a race will be a case of making money and not of losing money on some glamour.
As far as the whole tv thing and everything. I dont know. I suppose there will be a shitload of lawsuits back and forth between everyone and everything if they really form a break away series. I'm sure that track operators and tv stations all have some kind of clause build in and with all the big names leaving, esentially turning the sport in GP2+, I suppose alot of people will be saying that they dont have F1 anymore.
Monaco is overrated. As far as racing is concerned its just a 1.5 hours of running laps in the same order. It doesnt have to offer that much in terms of excitement so its more a sponser&money case than needing monaco for the fans.
Yes and the people who go there are a small bunch of people with money to spend. The average joe, which makes up for 99,9% of the millions of F1 viewers doesnt go to monaco so doesnt care about some kind of feeling he doesnt have and just wants to see something exciting on tv.
Fuel consumption is higher at higher revs.
If this and reliability is not an issue, run at the highest possible revs at all times.
Vettel was brilliant. Nobody could touch him and he made no mistakes.
Alonso and Hamilton had a great scrap at the back of the pack. Both cars lacked grip and they were all over. Great stuff, too bad no points for either. Heidfeld was incredibly slow in the first stint and both Alonso and Hamilton were stuck behind him who were 20 seconds behind Fisichella's Force India.
Alonso and Hamilton had a great scrap at the back of the pack. Both cars lacked grip and they were all over. Great stuff, too bad no points for either. Heidfeld was incredibly slow in the first stint and both Alonso and Hamilton were stuck behind him who were 20 seconds behind Fisichella's Force India.
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I'm surprised this empty threat from the teams about a breakaway has received so much coverage, it's not even in the teams best interest. Look what happened to CART after the IRL split.
Every driver grows up wanting to win the Formula One World Championship for the prestige and the history, they don't care about teams. I'd be willing to bet every driver contract on the grid has the words "Formula One" in it, so if the team leaves F1 the driver contracts would be void and they will be free to sign up for F1 for whichever teams fill the vacuum. The same goes for sponsors.
The FIA are always portrayed as the big bad bullies, but the sport needs an independent ruling body and I have nothing but respect for how the FIA handles F1, especially with regards to safety. I'd like to see how the teams would cooperate in handling issues like mass dampers, double diffusers, spygate
Plus, where are they going to race? Not at any circuits wanting to keep (or achieve) FIA status, that's for sure.
If they don't like Max Mosley then fine, run against him in the next FIA presidential election.
It's all a bit silly. No circuits, no drivers, no coverage, no sponsorship. They'd be in a significantly worse position than CART were in 1996.
You should go to a Grand Prix there. I guarantee your opinion will be reversed, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't your favourite track afterwards. It really is special, TV (or even words) don't do it justice.
As for the British GP, the conditions and circuit suited the Red Bull perfectly, but I'm not sure where else that will be the case. Spa, perhaps. But pretty much every addition they make seems to benefit them on the track, and they have a huge budget, while I don't see Brawn making significant gains in performance for the rest of the season. One more upgrade and Red Bull will be the fastest car on most of the remaining circuits. If they can drop that in the next 3 weeks the championship will be very interesting.
Massa had a phenomenal race considering his strategy, driver of the day by far.
It makes laptime sense that McLaren removed their outboard KERS setup for a circuit with such high speed direction changes through the first half of the lap, but it's still a compromised car. If you designed your car around KERS you might as well leave it in, especially if you're going to be fighting at the back. It was surprising to see Hamilton make a rookie error spinning at Vale.
Every driver grows up wanting to win the Formula One World Championship for the prestige and the history, they don't care about teams. I'd be willing to bet every driver contract on the grid has the words "Formula One" in it, so if the team leaves F1 the driver contracts would be void and they will be free to sign up for F1 for whichever teams fill the vacuum. The same goes for sponsors.
The FIA are always portrayed as the big bad bullies, but the sport needs an independent ruling body and I have nothing but respect for how the FIA handles F1, especially with regards to safety. I'd like to see how the teams would cooperate in handling issues like mass dampers, double diffusers, spygate
Plus, where are they going to race? Not at any circuits wanting to keep (or achieve) FIA status, that's for sure.
If they don't like Max Mosley then fine, run against him in the next FIA presidential election.
It's all a bit silly. No circuits, no drivers, no coverage, no sponsorship. They'd be in a significantly worse position than CART were in 1996.
You should go to a Grand Prix there. I guarantee your opinion will be reversed, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't your favourite track afterwards. It really is special, TV (or even words) don't do it justice.
As for the British GP, the conditions and circuit suited the Red Bull perfectly, but I'm not sure where else that will be the case. Spa, perhaps. But pretty much every addition they make seems to benefit them on the track, and they have a huge budget, while I don't see Brawn making significant gains in performance for the rest of the season. One more upgrade and Red Bull will be the fastest car on most of the remaining circuits. If they can drop that in the next 3 weeks the championship will be very interesting.
Massa had a phenomenal race considering his strategy, driver of the day by far.
It makes laptime sense that McLaren removed their outboard KERS setup for a circuit with such high speed direction changes through the first half of the lap, but it's still a compromised car. If you designed your car around KERS you might as well leave it in, especially if you're going to be fighting at the back. It was surprising to see Hamilton make a rookie error spinning at Vale.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
CART isnt F1. Were there actually people outside the US that could be botherd with CART/IRL? Nobody knows the drivers or teams and the best they produced, Bourdais, cant perform in F1 so that pretty much sums up the quality of the series.
F1 is totally different. People want to see the big names like Ferrari and Alonso. I doubt anybody will be botherd if they are watching the really big teams and drivers in F1 or F1new.
They want to drive the fastest cars against the best drivers. It happend that you could find that in F1 for the past 60 years. If a new series offers something better, they'd want to go there. Same goes for Sponsors. They want to be where the big names are because your brand on a Ferrari in F1new is worth alot more than your brand on a souped up GP3 car in ''F1'' with a team and driver that nobody ever heard of.
Plenty of tracks that would be very willing to host a GP.
Uhh they have teams. About every team that means something in F1 to be exact. Same for the drivers. Sponsors would follow because of that and I doubt it will be really hard to sell a series with big names like Ferrari and Mclaren. Same goes for the tracks. If they require no adjusting of the track they could go pretty much anywhere because its likely about the biggest event a track can possibly get.
Now that was the whole point wasnt it. Out of the millions of F1 fans only a very few ever go there so having or not having monaco wont be a big deal as far as the fan base goes.
Not forgetting that when Mercedes/McLaren, Ferrari and Renault make their own series none of the also rans will get Mercedes/McLaren, Ferrari or Renault parts/engines so F1 will be nowhere near the pinacle of the sport.
I personally hope they do break away as then we might start seeing cars that are f'ing fast that can go round the hairpin at Monaco at 200mph with all the technology they can invent.
Say what you want about driver aids, but when they all came out in the Mansell era (take out the Williams which was so dominate it was untrue) the racing was far far better.
I personally hope they do break away as then we might start seeing cars that are f'ing fast that can go round the hairpin at Monaco at 200mph with all the technology they can invent.
Say what you want about driver aids, but when they all came out in the Mansell era (take out the Williams which was so dominate it was untrue) the racing was far far better.
They also want lots of money. If the split does happen I wonder what's the chance of Bernie and Max subsidising drivers wages to the tune of a few hundred million to tempt some big name quasi-has-beens, (eg. <insert names of some previous world champions who aren't winning much at the moment>) to old-style F1?
I am wondering about the recent circuits e.g. Turkey, Bahrain, China etc. and the TV licensing hell.
Anyway seems a bit drastic to throw away so many years of history because of one man's arrogance. The FIA should lock him up in a dungeon somewhere and throw away the keys (sans scantily clad leather-whipping maidens).
Anyway seems a bit drastic to throw away so many years of history because of one man's arrogance. The FIA should lock him up in a dungeon somewhere and throw away the keys (sans scantily clad leather-whipping maidens).
I think a split would be a disaster.
Edit: Joe Saward muses about what F1 is
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/what-is-formula-1/
Edit: Joe Saward muses about what F1 is
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/what-is-formula-1/
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I'm not as convinced as the doom mongers that a spilt would end up like the IRL/CART issue and, if managed effectively, it could ultimately be a good thing - imagine if FOTA managed got, say, 90% of commercial revenues back into the teams as opposed to the 50% that it is at the moment; even with lower priced agreements they could still end up with more going back to the teams and promotion of the event itself. The Premier League started in much the same fashion and similar reasons as this has and that can hardly be called a failure. Likewise, did aspiring players and fans dream of "League Division 1" or did they dream of playing for / watching Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, etc?
Its clear that this discussion isn't just about Max and the way he's managing things; thats the tipping point, but its also clear that commercial rights and revenues are a significant driving point behind the whole thing. Thats on of the ironic things with Mosley's statements concerning how the manufacturers can dream of spending money on a FOTA breakaway when they are in dire trouble - the manufacturers may be seeing this as an opportunity for the teams to become more self sufficient by increasing the share of the commercial rights, rather than only getting 50% with the restr currently syphoned off by CVC (which some question the notion of whether Max had the right to sell to Eccelstone, exclusively, for 100 years (!), who then sold it to CVC).
FOTA should buy CVC out. CVC need to make debt payments and they don't really care about the sport and they certainly don't understand it.
The reason I say a split would be a disaster is because of the legal flood of shit that the sport will embroiled in. Everyone will sue everyone else and normal (not die hard) fans will simply up and leave because they don't care about all this crap.
It is all a huge clusterfuck and FIA is the key. If they do the smart thing at the WMSC meeting tomorrow, they could solve all of this and we could just get on with it.
CVC are a Private Equity firm and they probably have no interest in selling the commercial rights - especially if they are using the money from F1 to support some other companies they own that are not doing particualarly well in this economic climate. Sure, they will be concerned if all their stars in F1 walked away and they may allow more distribution of funds to the teams, but FOTA will need to weigh that against what they believe they could get if they controlled the commercial rights.
I think the legal issues may rumble on in the background, but personally I don't think that will stop two red cars, two silver cars and all the others lining up on a grid somewhere next year.
The FIA is only half the problem - even if the FIA issue is sorted they still have Eccelstone and CVC issues and the fact that at least 50% of the commercial revenues are going outside of F1.
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