The State of the Nation
In keeping with tradition, FIA president Max Mosley had lunch with a select group of reporters, ahead of the upcoming Formula One season. And, in keeping with tradition, the manufacturers, cost saving initiatives, and regulations changes were the hot topics of the hour (or two, as the case may be...)
FIA president Max Mosley has made no secret of the fact that he has been on a crusade to save Formula One from itself for the past few years.
Amid the backdrop of rapidly escalating costs, the fight for survival by independent teams, the flexing of political muscle by the manufacturers, and the chance to create an all-new rulebook for 2008, Mosley has wasted little time in getting down to action and implementing solutions.
Though at times he has not been flavour of the month with some teams and car-makers for rule changes he has implemented, and some proposals have been dropped and forgotten, most would readily accept that it is always better to try and fail to do something than never to have tried at all.
There have been considerable successes, especially on safety grounds and keeping a lid on costs, but Mosley's job is far from finished. There remains, for example, considerable uncertainly about what will happen to plans for a Grand Prix Manufacturers' Association breakaway, and no one really knows what shape the sport will be in from 2008.
So when Mosley invited reporters to his annual pre-season lunch earlier this week, autosport.com was only too happy to go along and join in on Mosley's F1 'State of the Nation' verdict.
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Mosley begins with a recap of plans that had emerged the evening before the lunch to open up entries for the 2008 championship for only a few days at the end of March - effectively handing the GPMA members a 'window of opportunity' to commit to F1 or go their own way.
Max Mosley: There is a plan now, if the World Council agrees on March 22, to open the entries on March 23 and then close them again fairly soon thereafter, maybe 10 days or a bit longer. And then after another 30 days, we would announce who the entrants are.
The reason for doing this is under the new regulations we can change anything, even things which affect the design of the car, up to 18 months before January 1. So for 2008, we have got until June 30 (this year). So what makes a lot of sense is once we know who wants to compete in the championship, have that group together and take any steps that need to be taken and finalise the regulations, making sure everything is as it should be. And that's really it.
Under the Concorde Agreement we have to publish the technical regulations for 2008 before the end of 2005, which we have done. And of course once we know who is in the championship, we can sit down with those people and adjust the regulations if necessary, so the idea is to know who is going to be competing in the championship in good time so that we can adjust the regulations should they need it before June 30, 2006.
The other thing we brought out yesterday was a proposal that has been discussed between us and the committed teams, which is the possibility of having a homologated engine. What that means is from a certain point, for example June 2006, say that's the homologation date, we would want one example of each competing engine deposited with the FIA. That engine would be the homologated engine. It would mean that any engine used by any team in the championship in 2008, '09 and '10 would be identical to that engine, so there would be no R&D at least for those three years.
The effect of that will be significant because, first of all, in the middle of the season, this coming season, the chances are that no matter how much money people have been spending, no one will have pulled out a huge advantage. They may be a little bit better or a little bit worse but they will all be in the ballpark. So all the engines will be within a very narrow range.
But at the moment, the most economical manufacturers are spending about 100 million Euros a year on their engines and the most extravagant are spending more than 200 million Euros. Well, if you stop the R&D, a new 2006-spec engine, all new parts, costs approximately 200,000 Euros.
If you assume that you then have a two-race engine - because the original plan for a three-race engine won't work because the engines we want to homologate are two-race - you would then expect a team to use 18 engines for its two cars per season. Assuming they do 30,000km of testing, 1,500km per engine is reasonable, so that's another 20 engines - so that is in total 40 engines, times 200,000 is about eight million Euros.
In fact, in some ways that would be an overestimate, because you would not make a brand new engine each time. Some of the parts would be carried over. On the other hand, for some of the manufacturers, the basic engine will cost more than 200,000 Euros. But it is eight million Euros more or less. That is an enormous saving, so you would save all the manufacturers collectively about a billion Euros before you start on the savings on the chassis, and the racing spectacle, the interest and the racing will not be affected in the slightest.
The immediate question is what happens if another manufacturer wants to come in or what happens if somebody has developed a significant problem with the engine, that fitting it to a new chassis causes vibrations, for example? Well, the answer is you would allow a new manufacturer in, provided he could satisfy the Technical Working Group - that really means the existing competitors - that it was fair and equitable to let him do that. In other words, his engine in all relevant features - power, fuel consumption, durability, or duty cycle - fell within the same spectrum as the existing engines. The same would apply to a modification. So that would be the engines solved.
So why do we need to do this for the major manufacturers? Well, if the major manufacturers can run their teams relatively inexpensively then the chances of them stopping becomes very, very small. If you take the case of Renault, [CEO Carlos] Ghosn has made it clear that if it is cost-effective he will do it, and if it is not cost-effective then he won't. And I think the same, sooner or later, is going to apply to the other manufacturers.
They are happily spending these hundreds of millions at the moment, but sooner or later the boards of these companies are going to say, 'Are we really giving value for money?' And there is no doubt if it is cheaper then the chances of them shutting it down is much smaller.
The other factor is that if we can lower the costs generally to the point where everybody - including independent teams - can survive, which means the 100 million dollar bracket, what they can get from commercial sponsorship and from Bernie, means they can survive on that comfortably. Then you have 12 teams quite competitive from one to another, all of whom have enough money to compete at this level. Then it makes for much better racing, much better competition, and much more chance for drivers to shine. It makes a better championship.
If somebody says 'what about the ultimate technology?' Well, you would still have a formula that was three or four times more expensive than any other racing formula, and it means that - unless they are spending the money unwisely - the technology would be greater. The engine would still run to 19,000rpm and 20,000rpm and it would be a magnificent engine.
If they say, 'you stopped us doing development, we are a big manufacturer, this is outrageous', the response to that would be 'yes, but your product cycle for your road cars is five years and we are talking about three years'. What is wrong with building an engine and not changing it for three years? People might say it's against the traditions of F1, but F1 in the 1970s was built on that because there was a de facto engine that hardly changed at all. Those who developed their own engines, like Ferrari, BRM and various people, never succeeded to a point where it was a threat.
What it all comes down to in the end is that we need to know what we are doing. We need to sit down with the people actually in the championship, finalise the regulations and then stop all the arguments. If there are people who don't want to join on those terms, that's fine for them. If anyone wants to run a series with unlimited expenditure and unlimited technology, we will give them every assistance in doing that, as long as it's not dangerous.
But we don't believe that that is viable, to run a series with unlimited technology, because if you do, it becomes a money-spending competition, at which point the whole interest in the championship will disappear. It will become increasingly a one-make or two-make series, which is exactly what we know the public don't like and none of us want. And it doesn't actually help the manufacturer in the end, when it becomes known they have only won by spending more money than everybody else.
We think this is the best, the simplest and fairest way to produce a good competition and therefore needs to be pushed through. But it all depends on getting the World Council to agree and also that the six committed teams should go along with it. The homologated engine is still under discussion.
Q: But the manufacturers are not even all coming from the same place. For example, Honda is concerned more with technology, whereas Renault appear to be concerned about costs.
Mosley: Exactly. Well, if you remember about a year ago we had the great meeting where none of them turned up. Then they wrote saying we're going to come with their own proposals. And obviously they never did, because to get them all to sit down and agree is virtually impossible. They've all got completely different approaches. That's really why you need an independent regulator. However incompetent, it's got to be better than that situation! I do honestly think keeping the independent teams going is fundamental.
Q: So does the sport need manufacturers at all, or could it survive with only independent teams?
Mosley: It could do, and it did in the past. But it is much better with the manufacturers and, I believe, if you take away their possibility to spend money on technology. I don't believe if Honda won the world championship in 2009 anyone will say it doesn't count because you have got a standard ECU, or it is not really the world championship because you are using the same engine you used the previous year. It wouldn't occur to anyone. The fact they have done so spending 100 million dollars rather than 300 million dollars I would have thought should please them.
The only problem is that at 100 million dollars the competition is stiffer because there are more people with more brains having a go at it with 100 million dollars, than there would be with 300 million dollars. So yes, it makes the competition stiffer by reducing the costs, but that is a good thing. You would not run the Olympics on the basis that the only people you allow in are multi-billionaires.
Q: Why have the manufacturers been reluctant to sign up to the agreements?
Mosley: Well, what I think has happened is that if you are running a racing team and you have 800-900 employees, then someone comes along and does this, you are going to have to either fire or re-employ a whole chunk of them. That's the last thing they want to do. It's a very unpleasant process to go through. That's the first point.
The second point is that if you are a racing department in a big company, your status in the company is a function of your importance or your department, and that in turn depends on how many people and how big the budget is. So the man running the racing division wants the biggest department, the most people, the greatest technology and the most facilities.
The poor man running the company, he wants to make a profit. The trouble is, he doesn't have the time to spend analysing to make sure the racing is being run like it should be run, so he listens to the proposal and he either accepts it or he doesn't. He can't cut the costs down. The only people who can do that is us.
Then we have to recognize in turn that when the big boss looks at the budget, the lower the budget to be in F1 the more likely he is to stay. When you talk to the CEOs of these companies, they have got an enormous businesses that are so complicated. Motor racing and F1 is just a little bit.
I said to one of them the other day, and I think it went home, that the whole approach is wrong. They decide to go to F1, so they call in their technical people and ask for a proposal. The technical people go off and come back with a Rolls Royce of a proposal, with every technical possibility. What they should do is say we want to be in F1, we want to be at the front, and we are prepared to spend 40 million Euros. If you can do it for that, that's great, but we want to run at the front. If you can't do that, we'll go back to developing the new 3-Series or C-Class or whatever.
The technical people will come back then and say they can do it for 40 million Euros. You've seen this in rallying. Ford did exactly that with Malcolm Wilson and said that's how much you can have. He came back and said he can do it, and by recent results rather well.
Q: Is it all about ego?
Mosley: There's an element of that. It's human nature in a funny sort of way. They get used to it [being this way] and they can't do without the big motorhome, etc. etc. We had an old caravan in the 1970s and that was a privilege!
Q: What are your aims for 2006?
Mosley: To turn up at the last race with at least three drivers and at least three teams still capable of winning the championship. If that happens it will be brilliant. In the end we can try and level the money, but there is no accounting for talent. There is nothing you can do, or should do, about that.
Q: What would you say to claims that you are being antagonistic to the manufacturers?
Mosley: It sounds like that a bit, but it really isn't meant like that. The no money thing is really quite logical, but what is logical and what people like are two really quite different things.
They have had a three-year war with Bernie to try and up the money from him, from let's say $20 million to $40 million, but we can come along and we can take away more than $100 million straight like that on the engines. Is it not then logical, we take the $100 million out and you say you didn't get your 20 to 40, so you are 80 better off because we have taken the 100 out.
Your only complaint about us taking the 100 out is that there isn't enough technology. Well, if you don't get the extra 20 and the independent teams got it, then they could run higher technology and they could spend more money on F1, and you are better off by 60 than you would have been by getting no money at all, and they are better off by 20 million than they would have been.
It is not an attack; it is just a completely logical conclusion from reducing the budget, because they are that much better off. I do see that it could be represented as me having a go at them, which I really am not.
And then the window of opportunity, yes it does sound a bit harsh, but on the other hand we do need to be able to sit down with people who are going to do the championship and say, 'do you really want to change this second grommet on the ECU?' There are some really complicated things that we need to get right to make it all work.
Q: Can the manufacturers still develop technology as they might wish?
Mosley: Well, there is not a lot we can do about the other black hole, which is the wind tunnel. A huge amount of money goes into that and we'll do what we can to cut that down, but we can't do much. Whatever you do you've got GP2, where you can run a couple of cars for $2 million, and you've got to where we would like to see a couple of cars run for $100 million. Obviously you have much, much higher technology, but actually GP2 is pretty high-tech.
Q: Do think the worst is over in terms of arguments in F1?
Mosley: I think so. You see, in the end someone at these big companies is going to have to sit down and work out what they want to do. And if what we are doing is reasonable and economic, good value for money, sensibly thought through, I think they may start to say, 'that is the sensible thing to do'. The last thing we want is an argument.
Q: Frank Williams was saying, when he agreed to stay with Bernie, that he was amazed at how little the GPMA had actually done about organising a race series
Mosley: It's actually quite difficult. When I think back to 1980/81, when we were trying to break away, we were genuine proper racing teams. We had a lot of trouble. In fact we lost the FISA/FOCA war, it's just that [then-FIA president Jean-Marie] Balestre didn't realise - thank God! - So he caved just in time.
The problem is... imagine you are a group of manufacturers and you go to a circuit and say, 'we want to run a race as part of this series', and they say they have a contract with Bernie. You say, 'yes, yes, but we've got all the good cars'. They say, yes, they would like to run your race but they are still going to have to pay Bernie even if he turns up with F3000 cars, because that's what the contract says. So they will run your race, but they won't give you any money.
Then you go the TV companies and they are going to say the same thing. They know they are dealing with five mega companies with unlimited resources. It's not like dealing with us when we were the rebels because if they said then we can't pay you, we were out of business. In this case, they will say the manufacturers will have to pay. Then the whole business plan takes a dive because it all depends on doing a better job than Bernie, so suddenly there is no income.
The circuits actually said to them, 'we're not very interested. When you've got the thing together, when we know who's competing, when we know who's in which championship, come back and talk to us because at the moment we've got an existing contract.'
It is not new; I've been saying this for three years. It's a fundamental problem if you go to them representing a multinational company. You have absolutely no chance of doing any sort of a deal, because they all know they don't need to give you money because you've got more...
Q: There has been discussion about limiting downforce. Has there been any progress on how to measure this?
Mosley: It's interesting. A lot of people don't like what they call 'the bridge of doom'. The idea is you simply put weight on the car and, say, the maximum amount of weight allowed is 12,000 newtons and if it doesn't touch the ground it's illegal. You then make a nice rubber plank under the car, so if they do run it on the ground the cars will be seriously retarded. There are all sorts of things they could do to cause trouble.
But one, it's unpopular; two, it's more work for us; but three and most importantly, they wouldn't be working on downforce, but they would still be working on what is important, the ratio of drag to downforce, so you wouldn't solve the problem.
The only thing we could do is make a list of what they call interesting areas and try to eliminate them. But as fast as we get rid of them, they will find others. What we need to do is make sure the man who has the $100 million wind tunnel doesn't have a huge advantage over the man who doesn't.
Q: What about an aero template?
Mosley: You could. We've done a version of that which says you can only have two bodywork changes a season. It's in the regs at the moment but is still under discussion. But if the whole car is identical for three seasons people would complain. They like new cars that look different, whereas not changing the engine nobody will even know. It doesn't change anything. And if you said you can have that shape and nothing else, of course they'd all look the same.
Q: What's the latest on Toro Rosso's engine? There are two schools of thought: one, Cosworth says that its V10 should be slower than their V8; and the other, that it should be slower than the slowest V8?
Mosley: We take a middle position. It shouldn't be an engine you should voluntarily use, only if you have to without access to a competitive V8. So what's a competitive V8? That it should be in the lower half of the spectrum of engines in terms of the power curve. We've got an open mind but we think it's sufficiently below the competitive engines.
