Are Ferrari spitting the dummy

[bodgit]

F1 'can survive without Ferrari'

Formula 1 could go on without Ferrari according to Max Mosley, president of motorsport's governing body, the FIA.

The FIA has announced a £40m budget cap for teams from 2010, aspects of which Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo labelled "fundamentally unfair".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/moto...ne/8030781.stm

[DCM]

from what I understand, the $40m budget cap, is voluntary, but the teams will have far more freedom in design, if a team doesn't want to stick to $40m, then they have to work in realms of the 2009 rules.

[jim76]

the 40m doesn't include driver salaries and some other bits though so it doesn't seem like a major cut to me. If you have two drivers with combined salay of £20m on top of this then it is still around £60-70m total budget which isn't that far off what most teams run on (with the exception of Ferrari and Maclaren, and probably Toyota).

[telboy]

I thought teams like Mclaren and Ferrari were running budgets of around £140million?

At the end of the day, the rules are the same for everyone. And, like this year, the way that you manage those rules is up to you.
Look at Brawn, Toyota and Williams. They looked at the rules closer than the rest, and they have good cars now.

I think its a good way to even up the gap between the big teams and the smaller ones. The teams that run to the 2010 rules will get more testing, so that can only be a good thing for the small teams.


PLUS!!!!!!!!! No refuelling!! YAY!!
Thank god for that!
Look how close the races have been this year......until the pitstops, then the field spreads out. No refuelling can only be a good thing.

[glypo]

I don't think they are.

The budget cut is far to harsh. £80m would be workable for the time being. Budget restrictions area good idea for sure, but they need to be realistic.

How many skilled people (Aerodynamicists, Vehicle dynamicists etc) are going to made redundant right in the middle of a recession because of the FIA....

[Gaz_Stanton]

Looking at the overview of the rules I can't see it affecting the bigger teams that much as all that will be needed is a bit of creative accounting and some crafty re-organisation.
Could be quite a grey area to define a team's cost that 'had no influence on its performance' when they have other departments that could be developing the same technology for another application within the company.

[BagofSkill]

I think it's total crap this budget cut stuff. The idea is you'll build, or more probably assemble 2 cars and run all year except for driver salaries and marketing.

The supposed advantage is that if you agree to the cap then you can go testing and use windtunnels etc, but the thing is you won't have the money to do that. You've also got the problem where if, like this year, one or a couple of teams do something differently, like the double deck diffuser, the other teams will have no spare cash to catch up, so the championship will be over after the first race. The double deck diffuser cost Renault over ten million dollars. That would be a quarter of thier budget gone before they even account for building the rest or the car/engine/gearbox.

What happens when with the free engine regs a capped teams runs a turbo engine that wipes the floor, but no other capped team has the cash to flip to a new turbo engine, and the non capped teams can't use a turbo anyway. So the championship is a joke and a write off for that year.

I really want one of Max Moselys 'parties' to go wrong in a michael hutchins way. Is that evil of me?

[DaveG28]

Originally Posted by BagofSkill

I think it's total crap this budget cut stuff. The idea is you'll build, or more probably assemble 2 cars and run all year except for driver salaries and marketing.

The supposed advantage is that if you agree to the cap then you can go testing and use windtunnels etc, but the thing is you won't have the money to do that. You've also got the problem where if, like this year, one or a couple of teams do something differently, like the double deck diffuser, the other teams will have no spare cash to catch up, so the championship will be over after the first race. The double deck diffuser cost Renault over ten million dollars. That would be a quarter of thier budget gone before they even account for building the rest or the car/engine/gearbox.

What happens when with the free engine regs a capped teams runs a turbo engine that wipes the floor, but no other capped team has the cash to flip to a new turbo engine, and the non capped teams can't use a turbo anyway. So the championship is a joke and a write off for that year.

I really want one of Max Moselys 'parties' to go wrong in a michael hutchins way. Is that evil of me?

I pretty much agree, tho am at least happy refueling is gone!!

[SlowOne]

Originally Posted by glypo

I don't think they are.

The budget cut is far to harsh. £80m would be workable for the time being. Budget restrictions area good idea for sure, but they need to be realistic.

How many skilled people (Aerodynamicists, Vehicle dynamicists etc) are going to made redundant right in the middle of a recession because of the FIA....

Chicken... or egg? If there isn't a cut then it is possible more manufacturers will pull out and lots of people lose their jobs. If they cut the budget a lot of people will lose their jobs. There is much less money around for F1, so whichever way you cut it, people will lose their jobs whether the FIA make this move or not.

This is not the first time this has happened (mid-70s, early '80s and early '90s) and F1 has always bounced back. And there have always been teams who find an advantage that the others can't afford to replicate easily - Lotus (innumerable times, including stressed engines, wings and ground effect), Renault (turbo engines) and Cooper (mid engine) - so they'll all get through it.

As the budget cap won't include engines for 2010, it isn't going to effect many more than McLaren, Ferrari, Renault and Red Bull. And if it means that good engineers can make a difference to their teams, bring it on!

[BagofSkill]

Another point, how are teams going to go from 150-250milion down to 40milion in one hit. How about some sort of sliding decreasing budget cap? No sence to this at all!

[ben]

Silly question Where does all the money come from which the teams get for there budget? Im a bit dense sometimes

[BagofSkill]

Teams build thier budgets from TV rights money (half gets divided amongst the teams based on a formula of points and TV time, the other half goes sraight to bernie). The rest comes from sponsors and partners.

[DaveG28]

Originally Posted by BagofSkill

Teams build thier budgets from TV rights money (half gets divided amongst the teams based on a formula of points and TV time, the other half goes sraight to bernie). The rest comes from sponsors and partners.

Some people will get even more loaded! The cost to sponsor someone like Mclaren won't drop so they only get $40m income, so presumably the rest will all get given to shareholders/invested in buildings etc! in fact, does the $40m include infrastructure such as building new hq's etc? And assuming not, what's to stop mclaren/Ferrari spending on infrastructure that will improve the cars such as simulation software etc??

Also, I may be wrong here, but won't currency differences create difficulties between teams in the eurozone, in the uk, and potentially in the us if the new team happens? Ie the same work could be cheaper in the USA, or exchange rate fluctuations etc (I assume there will be fixed exchange rates for each year for the fia calcs but still)??

[SlowOne]

I think we're making this more complicated that it needs to be. It seems unlikely that they'll get this right first time, but if they spend years trying to get it right, most of the Teams will be borassic before the cap comes!

Sponsorship bears no relation to the cost of running the Team. It's a commercial decision. Say you get 30 minutes coverage of your name every other weekend in front of 50m people watching around the World. What would that cost by making an advert, and buying TV time on (say) 30 countries? A Team would charge something akin to that, and throw in things like hospitality in Monaco, etc., something you can't get from buying a TV ad. So, if you could get £60m of income this way, and it cost £40m to run the Team, you make £20m profit. This is how the likes of Sir Frank and Ron get to be worth tens of millions.

Manufacturer's make the same calculation - how much value do I get from linking my name with this sport? Ferrari and Mercedes think they get value, Honda now don't. It isn't the most rational business decision, but that's the way it works. The proposed budget cap excludes driver salaries, engines (for 2010) an direct marketing, so go figure how much of a 'cap' that is!

Race Teams are run by owners for a profit, and the sponsorship/income they can get is not related to the cost of running the Team, but the worth of their exposure to the sponsor. So, yes, they may nale a lot more money. but if Stoddard can come fifth in a GP on just £18m a year, why can't someone win on £40m? Oh, yes, I forgot... Brawn GP!

[BagofSkill]

Slow One, you won't read this in the papers but it's Honda's millions funding good engineering that put Brawn where they are. They are not a budget team, they're not an overnight start up. Honda gave Ross and the team 70million as a golden handshake for taking over the team (which is what it would have cost them to close the team down, considering FOM pentalty payments and salary/contract payouts). Don't buy the line that a privateer can win these days, they are only a privateer in name.

[Lee]

Originally Posted by BagofSkill

Slow One, you won't read this in the papers but it's Honda's millions funding good engineering that put Brawn where they are. They are not a budget team, they're not an overnight start up. Honda gave Ross and the team 70million as a golden handshake for taking over the team (which is what it would have cost them to close the team down, considering FOM pentalty payments and salary/contract payouts). Don't buy the line that a privateer can win these days, they are only a privateer in name.

I was just going to say this, Honda new their 08' car was crap and they were developing the 09' car a lot more and a lot sooner than other teams, so they should really have a head start. Also i think Honda may have seen it as profitable to stay in F1 if they appealed to their target audience. Maybe a few races with Murray Walker in a seat for the blue rinse brigade