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2005/2006 F1 News and Testing.
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Soldato
Why don't they use vegetable oil or cow poo for fuel 
Or Ethanol
Or Ethanol
Soldato
They could go steam powered. Water heated by the hot air coming out of the idiots mouth...
Steve
Steve
Soldato
Zip said:Why dont they just put the steering wheels in the drivers hands and make them walk around the track
But can you imaging the development costs of such a high performance steering wheel...he'd have to limit the size and make it last a whole season to keep the costs under control.
...and what about the drivers shoes??? would they be able to swap them at the pit stops?
Soldato
That would increase the cost of food and massage oil to dizzy heightsZip said:Why dont they just put the steering wheels in the drivers hands and make them walk around the track
Super Aguri delighted with shakedown
Following the shakedown at Kemble Airfield on Tuesday, when Super Aguri drivers Takuma Sato and Yuji Ide both got to run the car they will drive in the season opener at Bahrain, the team's chief technical officer, Mark Preston, spoke out.
"Yesterday's test at Kemble kicked off without a hitch," he revealed. "The car now has the full mechanical and electronic specification that will run in Bahrain. All systems checked out OK, including completely new software for the gearbox and chassis.
"Although only a short test," he continued, "we were extremely happy with the level of reliability and the level teamwork and interaction that has developed between Super Aguri F1 and Honda. I would like to thank everyone for their enormous effort over the proceeding weeks to get the car to the track as planned. It gave Sato and Ide a chance to feel what the car will be like and prepare themselves for the next few hectic weeks of testing before Bahrain."
Soldato
Fixed with a hammer and installing new partsFlibster said:Yay - the firewall/router issues are fixed.....
Soldato
Have they got some new bodywork for that old Arrows chassis yet? I am planning for SA to be the team of choice after the demise of Minardi but I will be ashamed if they are desparately bad!
Max says 'manufacturer' could sign Concorde
Another 'manufacturer' is on the cusp of joining Bernie Ecclestone's growing band of 2008 'Concorde' agreement signatories.
That's the information straight out of the mouth of FIA president Max Mosley, sparking fresh speculation that Renault, Honda or Toyota could be about to follow Ferrari's lead in breaking GPMA ranks.
It would be a killer blow to the carmakers' alliance, which could ultimately be left with only McLaren-Mercedes and BMW Sauber - both German manufacturers - to fill a 'breakaway' grid.
Scoffing at their apparent plans, Mosley was quoted by the 'Sport Bild' publication as saying three more private teams 'and a manufacturer' are currently making enquires about siding with the Bernie/FIA camp.
With six teams already poised to sign Concorde, if Mosley's additional four follow suit it would give the FIA F1 world championship a credible grid of twenty cars for 2008.
'Sport Bild' contends that David Richards' Prodrive, Roger Penske and Craig Pollock could be the private entries alluded to by Mosley, while cost-minded Renault - with FIA-supporter Flavio Briatore at the helm - is the most likely carmaker.
But F1's Japanese contingent, Toyota and Honda, are also uncomfortable about the current paddock dispute.
Italy's 'La Gazzetta dello Sport' quoted Mosley as saying that Bernie has already signed up the 'most important team' -- Ferrari. ''We also have Williams,'' he told the newspaper, ''(which is) a very prestigious and successful team.''
Another Finn joins McLaren
Another Finn will soon join McLaren.
To help driver Kimi Räikkönen, and teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, with their health and fitness, Aki Hinsa - currently in Turin - will leave his post on the Finnish Olympic Committee to join the team.
He has already worked with the Woking-based squad part time, but will now lead a full time staff of four, including Kimi (Mark Arnall) and Juan's (Gerry Convey) trainers.
The deal is part of new 'Direxiv' branding on the chrome MP4-21 car, which sees female CEO Misato Haga - linked with a Super Aguri-like 'b' McLaren team for 2007 - become formally affiliated with the team.
Mosley turns columnist
FIA president Max Mosley will try out a new profession this year, as he joins F1 Racing magazine as a regular columnist.
Mosley's column, called Grip 'n' spin, will appear regularly in the monthly magazine, which is published in 33 languages, in over 110 countries, with a circulation of a million copies a month.
Mosley's first column appears in the March 2006 issue, which goes on sale next week. F1 Racing's editor in chief Matt Bishop has warned that the text is likely to cause controversy, but he says the FIA president will not be censored.
"[His] first F1 Racing column is quite contentious," Bishop said. "A lot of people won't like it - especially people in hot seats in the boardroooms of F1's motor manufacturers. Well, tough.
"We never tell our columnists what they can or cannot write about, and no exception will be made for Grip 'n' spin."
The topic of Mosley's first column is quite predictable, and with a touch of self-irony, the Briton acknowledges as much.
"So, what to write my first column about?" Mosley begins. "On second thoughts, that's not really such a difficult question, is it?"
Unsurprisingly, the topic is cost savings, and the resistance of the manufacturers. "In the end, you see, we at the FIA are trying to save the teams, but particularly the manufacturers, from themselves.
"And if you want to know what happens when you listen too closely to the manufacturers, take a long, hard look at the IRL. It's not a pretty sight."
Everything is under control!
Formula 1 heads into the 2006 season with new rules governing the engine and the tyres. The most important changes: new V8 engines replace the 10-cylinder units used previously, tyre changes during the race are allowed again and qualifying will be carried out in a new format.
The countdown to the season’s opening race at the Bahrain International Circuit on March 12 is fully underway. The teams have been preparing for the moment of truth with extensive test drives and have been working feverishly on their new cars.
It’s not just the engine designers, tuning their new V8 units for power and reliability, who have been working hard: the aerodynamics experts have also been in great demand. The cars now have less output, making them more susceptible to air resistance, so the engineers have had to work increasingly towards efficiency instead of concentrating only on downforce.
The spectators at the race tracks will hardly notice the new engine regulations. The drivers, however, will definitely feel the consequences – after all, they must now make do with approximately 200bhp less. Because of the reduced engine power, they will have to adopt a more balanced driving style and attempt to carry more momentum through the corners. Small mistakes will now result in even greater time losses as the engines produce relatively low torque.
And torque, according to Formula 1 expert Christian Danner, “is always the thing that will make up for the odd mistake.”
Due to the reduced downforce of the race cars, the drivers will need to step on the brakes earlier when approaching corners, but will also be able to start accelerating again sooner. The first impressions from the test drives show that the cornering speeds will remain roughly the same overall, while speeds on the straights are expected to be about 10 to 15 kilometres per hour slower on average. With the new engine regulations, Formula 1 picks up on current challenges in passenger car production.
“Of course, there are no restrictions on engine displacement, but rapidly increasing fuel prices and stringent emission standards call for highly efficient, low-consumption engines that also need to be as compactly designed as possible. So the keyword in standard production is also downsizing, meaning a comparatively low cubic capacity while retaining high power density. Gains in efficiency of this nature are necessary to reduce consumption and fulfil the political requirements in regard to ecological issues in the face of rising demands concerning safety and comfort,” says Dr. Christoph Lauterwasser from the Allianz Zentrum für Technik (AZT).
The second drastic change of regulations in the Formula 1 concerns the tyres. After only a single season, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has abolished the rule stating that both qualifying and the race have to be completed using the same set of tyres. The drivers can now change tyres during the race again, so they are no longer forced to torturously cover the distance with a braking puncture or risk suffering the effects of serious tyre damage to ensure the chance of a good position.
The new rule is not only a step towards increased safety, it also makes the races more interesting for the spectators. It is almost certain that the fans will be seeing more pit stops, simply due to the fact that the new rule allows the teams more flexibility in their race strategies.
“It is very likely that we will be seeing three and four stops again,” says Christian Danner, for who the new tyre regulations have an additional side effect. “Because the new tyres do not need to last as long, they will definitely provide higher grip. This means that, as a driver, you might be able to regain what you have lost through the reduction in engine power.”
The one-hour qualifying will be performed in an entirely new fashion: during the first 15 minutes, all the cars will be out on the track. The six slowest contestants are eliminated and will start from positions 17 to 22 on the grid. After a five-minute break, the remaining 16 cars re-enter the track for a further 15 minutes. Their times from the first round are deleted. Again, the six slowest drivers are eliminated and assigned the starting positions 11 to 16. The 10 remaining contestants, whose lap times from the second round are again deleted, compete for the starting positions 1 to 10 during the last 20 minutes of qualifying.
The new format for the qualifying session sparked some controversial discussions among teams and drivers, not least due to the associated fuelling and refuelling rule. In the opinion of experts, the last word on this matter has yet to be spoken.
Everyone understand that? Goood.
Mercedes admits to V8 problems
Mercedes-Benz motorsport director Norbert Haug fears his company may not be able to solve its engine problems before the first round of the season in Bahrain, in three weeks time.
Haug publicly admitted for the first time that Mercedes is lagging behind on the V8 engine development and is facing some problems.
"I openly admit that we are not where we want to be with the V8 programme," Haug told this week's Autosport magazine. "The timescale is tight and we have some problems. Will we have it 100 per cent solved before Bahrain? Who knows?
"In the past we haven't had the biggest bore, so we've had to make a big step and associated with that is a learning process."
But the German added that recent reports, which claimed the Mercedes V8 is significantly down on revs compared to its rivals, were wide off the mark.
"These things get exaggerated. We're not panicking," he said.
Soldato
Were Mercedes not shafted again this year with more materials being banned from use in engines?
It's like Beryllium all over again...
It's like Beryllium all over again...
This has had to be re-formatted so hence the reason it was removed from above - plus it's so huge it's had to be split over 3 posts... 
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.
* * *
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.
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Q: So you don't think there will be a change before Bahrain?
Mosley: The way it is, no. Midland did a very good test, very scientific. The V10 came out ahead of the V8. But there are several factors there. The Toyota V10 was probably better than the Cosworth V10 that will be used. Secondly, the V8s will all improve whereas by definition the V10 won't. So the feeling was by the time we get to Bahrain it will quite a long way down the pecking order. All the indications so far is that it is. But we've said to Cosworth, don't get it wrong because we'll change it at a moments notice. So they've got a strong incentive.
Q: And are you convinced the new Toro Rosso is a new car?
Mosley: That's an interesting question. My understanding is that with Ford/Jaguar, the parts were, for some obscure reason to do with tax and the internal structure of the Ford Motor Company, designed and built by a company that was not the racing team.
If the parts are designed and manufactured by another company, and you own the intellectual property rights of the car that requires them, it is completely legitimate.
The thing you can't do is if you're Williams, you can't run a McLaren front wing. But both Williams and McLaren could run a Lola front wing. So it looks like it has come from a third company. But if somebody challenges it, then there will be an enquiry. But I'm sure they've taken advice.
Q: Do you anticipate a protest in Bahrain?
Mosley: Unlikely, unless it went very quickly. And even then no one will protest unless they have evidence. So I'd be surprised if we get a protest.
Q: Why has the FIA re-introduced tyre changes?
Mosley: The original reason to bring it in was that we were looking for ways to slow the cars down for 2005. We did a bit on the engine by going from one race to two races. We did a bit on the aerodynamics but they got that back in winter testing. And then we said all right, one tyre for the whole race. That'll slow them down a bit. And it did.
But tyre companies, instead of making a really solid tyre that went through the whole race, went marginal. It meant we had obviously Indianapolis, but we also had Montoya at Monza with a very marginal left rear. If that had exploded - as it would have done sooner or later - well, there would have been a bad accident and we would have been blamed.
Secondly, a lot of people were saying that it destroyed the spectacle, that tyre changes were part of the show. Originally I had thought naively that if you didn't need to change the tyres you didn't need to have 24 people around the car. But of course all they did was have 24 people round the car doing nothing.
Then there was another argument - and I admit we should have foreseen this - that if you have a tyre that does 350km each time, to test the tyre you're going to [need to] do 350km of testing each time. So what we'd actually done was increase testing.
Taking all those factors into account, and the fact that we didn't now need this extreme slowing down because we had a less powerful engine, it seemed to me the arguments for going back to tyre changing outweighed those against.
But of course, inevitably, because that appeared to suit Bridgestone, people started saying this was [done] for Ferrari. It's interesting that the focus swung, because Red Bull voted for the tyre changes even though his was a Michelin team, and that was because (Dietrich) Mateschitz was convinced that the spectacle point was fundamental.
Q: But for instance Monaco, which is never much of a race, had a fantastic ending because of the tyre rules. That only might come back with one tyre manufacturer.
Mosley: That's quite reasonable. But with one manufacturer I don't think we would quite have seen that massive falling off [of performance] that we got at Monaco. They'd have made a tyre that lasted.
Q: The only thing with tyre changes is that all the teams tend to fall into the same pattern of strategy...
Mosley: Well, we hope and think that come 2008, the aero problem will be finished, and we're still having discussions with the aerodynamicists and people who've got reservations. The pros are slowly gaining on the antis. And if the simulations of the CDG work are correct, then if you have a 1,000m straight then the car behind will be alongside the car in front by the next corner. The idea that a slower car can hold up a faster car will be history. But we have to be careful about that until we know.
Q: There is a desire to cut speeds, but with the improved aerodynamics of the V8 engine and the softer tyres from the return of pitstops, cornering speeds have gone up in slower and medium speed corners. And that is where accidents happen...
Mosley: Yes, I think it was bound to cause a re-adjustment, but the frightening corners are the high-speed corners and they are, everything being equal, if you haven't got the power to drive the wing through the air then you don't get the downforce and you don't get the speed.
But there is no doubt it is a nicer car with the V8, it is a better package. That will be accentuated if we drop the weight, which we want to do with the ballast, but there is a big argument against that - which is that a lot of them are not carrying that much ballast and if you take it out then you start to favour the lighter driver again. It is always nice to fix your weight distribution but if you were a light driver then you could put more ballast where you want.
I think in the end we may have to abandon that idea of dropping the weight limit, which is a pity. But on cornering speeds this year, there is no question that the cars will be faster in some places but I think in the worrying, life-threatening corners they will be slower.
Q: Most of the life-threatening corners have gone because Spa is off the calendar. What is the latest situation there?
Mosley: It is interesting. I think it is a good example of Bernie, because we have had nothing to do with it, but I think he is going to take on the whole financial risk of the place and probably run it, by his standards, uneconomically. But I think everyone realises that we have got to have it on the calendar. It is a great, classic event.
Q: Are you confident it will be back?
Mosley: Yes. I would be very surprised if it doesn't work out.
Q: What is going to happen about the general congestion in the calendar at the moment? There are one or two countries slaving to get on there, but teams and the media are complaining that it is currently too much hard work.
Mosley: That is one of the things where we want to sit down and talk with the people in the championship because there are various things being talked about. For example, the two-day weekend; or all-day Friday for testing.
There are all sorts of options going on, like going to a two-day weekend and 20 Grands Prix. But the argument against that is that it is not the extra day that is the killer; it is the travel to-and-from and the whole disruption to your life. And then would 20 be too many? Do the public get fed up? Certainly I think it is very bad to have a succession of back-to-backs, they are a disaster. It really should be spaced out, but you could start in February and finish in November. But would the public want that?
Those are the sort of things that need to be discussed, but we are really quite neutral in that because it is not so much our problem; it is a problem for the commercial people and the press.
Q: Talking about circuits, have you had any indication that Hockenheim is in trouble for this year?
Mosley: Only what I have read on the web; I have not heard anything direct, no.
Q: If Hockenheim and the Nurburgring do join forces for the future, does that open up a possibility of a European GP elsewhere in Europe and are there circuits that would be suitable?
Mosley: I think if they did join forces so we freed up a slot, that is much more likely to be outside Europe. There are some very interesting places being looked at now. It would be very logical to have a Grand Prix in India now, because with India and China you are getting on for half the world's population. Even now the number of equivalent of middle-class people in India is enormous, like China, but there are an awful lot of poor people still.
Q: What about Africa? Antarctica apart, it is the only continent that is not on the calendar?
Mosley: Obviously South Africa keeps coming up, and then there is a certain amount of interest in North Africa at the moment too, like Morocco. But as far as I know nothing very concrete. That is dealt with by Bernie, because there is somebody every week who wants a Grand Prix and we just get them to talk to Bernie.
Q: Qualifying has switched to a knock-out system this year. The teams have said they are going to get confused by it, and the drivers too. What are you expecting?
Mosley: I think you are going to sit there probably, and at a certain level it will make sense, because (22) cars will go out and six will get chopped off at the end, and then there will be another six. And then people will go around and around getting steadily quicker. If you are into these things, you know they will be burning off fuel and going faster; if you won't, then you will just know they will just be going faster.
And then at the end bit, where in probability they will come into the pits at the last minute, put on a new set of tyres and go out - this will cause a certain amount of interest.
But it is so new, it may well produce unintended consequences. But I think as a spectacle it will be more interesting than waiting for the next car to come around if you are at the circuit. I liked the old qualifying because I watched it on television and you can only watch one car at a time on television. At the circuit it was pretty deadly.
Q: What about preventing teams from adopting a maximum fuel burn-off tactic to get their cars extra light for the final session?
Mosley: We are going to tell them how much fuel they can put in (at the end of qualifying), so they will actually want to burn off as little as possible in one sense. So yes, they will be light, but then they won't be able to put the fuel in because we will tell them, you have done eight laps so you are allowed to put in 20 litres or whatever. Otherwise it would have been like having them going around with flamethrowers coming out of the back.
Q: Super Aguri are starting the season with an updated 2002 Arrows, which could be up to seven seconds off the pace. Is that the sort of image that F1 needs?
Mosley: It is not ideal, but on the other hand it is great to have another team. The thing is, if they are completely uncompetitive then they might well not turn up, and from our point of view that would not be a problem. They are obviously serious, they have got a lot of good people working there very hard, so they are fulfilling all the criteria and they have put up the deposit. They have got the right people, there is no question, and this is not a frivolous thing.
Q: Does the 107 percent rule still exist?
Mosley: No. We took it out, I cannot remember why, and then Paul Stoddart used to fight tooth-and-nail to keep it (out). We could never get unanimity to bring it back, but we ought to have the 107 percent rule. The stewards have an overall discretion, that if someone was clearly off the pace like if they wanted to go on with that man in Hungary (Channoch Nissany), then the stewards would have stepped in.
Bernie was the big supporter of that Nissany bloke and I remember landing at Cannes Airport and the phone went, and it was Bernie. He said: 'I don't know why you are so against this Nissany'. I asked him what he meant and he said: 'Well, he is fifth quickest.' And then there was a long silence and he said, 'mind you, there are only five cars out there!'
Q: Pat Symonds said this week that the new tyre regulations and the fact teams do not have to pick their compound choice until just before qualifying means there will be virtually no running on Fridays. Is that a worry?
Mosley: No. It is very much up to the teams. Whether he turns out to be right remains to be seen, particularly with Toro Rosso that has got an engine that can do virtually unlimited mileage. But the tyres, I think, there are seven sets and then they have got to make a
choice. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Q: A few years ago Christian Horner's name came up quite a bit in relation to someone who was knocking on the door ready to come into F1. He has now made it via another team, because Arden are still in GP2. Do you think the GP2 teams that are currently racing, are any of those potential F1 teams of the future, come 2008?
Mosley: It is possible, but the people who have been talking very seriously in 2008, one of them was intending to buy a GP2 team and do it through that route - which was Gerhard Berger. He has bought half of Toro Rosso but I am saying to him, 'why don't you come on board still? Mateschitz has got one-and-a-half teams and you can have one-and-a-half teams.' I am not sure he is up for that, but he was going to do that through GP2.
David Richards is looking at it quite seriously, but I think that is a separate operation, he has put a whole operation together. It would make sense, but I think a lot of them are going to wait and see what is on offer. That is why we want to bring it on quite quickly and give them a chance. A lot will depend on what Bernie will give them. If Bernie gave money down to 12th place - unlike the old (current) Concorde Agreement, which was down to 10th place - then the picture would change dramatically, so a lot of it is commercial.
Q: Last season the GPDA was pushing for improved safety at tests, and there was a big debate about that during the season. Has there been any progress on that?
Mosley: I think the teams have now said that they are all going to follow the Grand Prix level of safety at the tests, because some of the teams don't want us to get back into regulating the testing - and we don't terribly want to either. But from 2008 we will, because there is going to be limited mileage and that will be done with the standard ECU, so we will know exactly what has happened with the
engine.
Q: Are you absolutely committed to the standard ECU for 2008?
Mosley: Yes, we are full-on with that now. By that, we mean the box will run the whole car and not just the engine. Also, the hardware will be standard and so will the software and all the team will be able to do is map it, so the team will be able to tell the engine how much fuel to use on the over-run, but the algorithms that do this will be embedded in the unit, so it will be very much a standard ECU.
Q: The manufacturers don't like it, though. Is it negotiable?
Mosley: They hate it. No, we have taken the decision with the committed teams that there is going to be a standard ECU, so for anybody who wants to enter, that is going to be the rule.
In the end, it is phenomenally expensive having all the software engineers working constantly. I think if you said to the average Formula One fan, they probably wouldn't know what the ECU was, and certainly wouldn't know what it did. And whether it is the same in all the cars or not the same.
A lot of people in F1 could not tell you who supplies the ECU on each of the 10 teams. I don't think I could. I know who the suppliers are but I don't know which one does which team. So it is utter nonsense, and in the real world when you think this is real money that could be used for something sensible and it is just being thrown away.
Q: There has been talk about promotion/relegation in F1. What do you think?
Mosley: Well, we should do it. What ought to happen, and we are nowhere near sorting this out, is that we should have a feeder formula for Formula One, like a sort of F3000/GP2, but properly regulated for that purpose. And then we say that whoever wants a super-licence must come through that formula - there will be no shortcuts apart from genuine ex-F1 drivers. And then have some system where the best from that had an opportunity to go up and the worst of the F1 teams had to consider going down. It could be healthy.
One of the problems with bringing the costs down and making it prosperous and that everybody can run at a profit and you have got 12 competitive teams, is that then there is a danger that it becomes a closed-shop and it is not possible to get in, even if you want to come in.
At the moment it isn't like that because the costs went to the point that we were putting people out of business and that created vacancies. That is not the best way of doing it, but the promotion should come from a promotion/relegation system. But that is a whole huge discussion to be had with the teams, because anybody who thinks they might get into the category won't be too happy about it.
Q: At the moment you can run two GP2 cars for a couple of million Euros per season and you are talking about running an F1 team for 100 million Euros. That is a big gulf to overcome. What mechanism could the FIA put in place to make promotion realistic?
Mosley: Well, the team coming down would lose their sponsors. One of the things is that the proportion of the 100 million that comes from Bernie will be quite high, because he is effectively doubling what he gives the teams. And if we can get him to spread the money evenly or even favour more the teams at the back, because that is what you would do if you were running the system rationally.
The smaller teams would actually get more money than the successful teams because a successful team gets massive television exposure while a team at the back gets five percent of the TV exposure of the team at the front but they cannot get by on five percent of the budget.
So if there is budget you can control then you should use it to help raise the level of the smaller teams. It is a less extreme version of the thing in not giving the manufacturers any money. Again I cannot control that, that is really Bernie.
Q: And there is the fundamental thing in F1, from Frank [Williams] down, that it is a meritocracy?
Mosley: Yes, exactly. It's a, 'if you cannot cut it, tough' sort of thing. Again, that is right in a way, but we also want proper
competitive teams and you could see a system where, for the sake of argument, half the money came from Bernie, and if you were then promoted from GP2 then you have an instant 50 million Euros of your 100, and then you got to hunt around and get the rest from sponsors.
But the fact you have been brilliantly successful in GP2 and you have been promoted means you have a chance. And equally the people going down, they are probably starting to lose the sponsor money anyway. It is an area that we have not really looked at yet, because we haven't had that problem. It is only if we solve the financial problem, then we can get into it.
Q: And if it did happen then it would obviously add a lot of spectacle at the back of the grid - a race to survive as well as a race to win?
Mosley: Yes. It would be a whole new thing to look at.
Q: Do you think A1 GP has taught anything to Formula One with the model it has used?
Mosley: Not really. You see, it is a one-make series, and if you run a one-make series then 90 percent of your problems have gone
immediately, because you can do whatever you like with the costs and all the rest of it.
The idea of the countries running against each other is a nice idea, but inevitably it is a little bit like ski racing - there are some countries that have got them, and some countries that haven't. So it makes for strange racing. A1 GP in terms of a country versus country thing would only really work if they had the means to get the top drivers from each country, and they don't.
I think in F1, we just couldn't make that work. This was the first year for I don't know how long that the German national sporting authority didn't win the cup for the most points because they have in the past had three pretty good German drivers and it would just make a mockery with Germany (winning) all the time.
Q: Has it surprised you that A1 GP has not been embraced by the public?
Mosley: Not really. In the end, what they (the fans) like to watch is the big names. It is a star system, and for me the great lesson there was Group C at the end of the 1980s. You had all those marques - Mercedes, Jaguar, Toyota, Peugeot - and I think 5,000 people turned up at Silverstone, which was less than a BTCC race.
They were not interested in the big makes or the technology, which was extreme with those Group C cars. What they wanted was to see Prost and Senna. That is the thing the teams often forget; if you had the drivers, you could run some quite ordinary cars and still have the public.
Q: Max, was there a moment when it hit you in terms of money that, if the FIA doesn't do something radical, then the sport is going to evaporate?
Mosley: Yes, it was about two years ago. That was when we started on the whole thing and if you remember we called the great meeting about the engines at Monaco at the beginning of May 2004. We got all the engine people together and said this is getting ridiculous. And one of them, Norbert Haug, said we are collectively spending more than a billion dollars per year just supplying engines for 14 cars. Everyone agreed that this was absurd and a working group was set up to agree about measure to reduce the costs of the engines.
They came back with a unanimously agreed set of measures, with materials and all sort of things, including 2.4 litre V8s. And there was a minority report from Ford and Renault saying we should go even further, fixing the bore size, fix the block, and so on.
In the meantime, the Technical Working Group had been saying to us for two years that we needed to get the power down to about 700bhp, which was at that time the estimate of what you would get with a 2.4-litre V8, from 900bhp with a 3-litre.
So the cost reduction thing kind of stalled and then I said, why don't we take the 2.4-litre V8 and then that is the power reduction. Then we had the whole thing of using the provisions in the Concorde Agreement and they forget all about the cost reduction, and there was furious opposition from three of the manufacturers to the 2.4-litre V8, so in the end we forced it through.
Then that became the rule and now they are saying that, 'This is costing us two billion dollars'. And they have forgotten - because their memory span is a bit like a Goldfish; once around the bowl, and it is all forgotten. Their memory span doesn't go back to the meeting in Monaco, where when we did the power reduction we not only took the cost-reduction measures that all seven manufacturers had agreed but we also took the more extreme measures from Renault and Ford, so there was full-on cost reduction.
That is the actual rule that we have got now, but they have forgotten that this was originally done for cost reduction, because it is all to do for power. So they are saying blithely that the cost is two billion dollars, which is manifestly untrue, and in the meantime Cosworth have come along, taking advantage of the cost-reduction measures and it looks as though maybe Cosworth have built an engine for about 20 million Euros which is as good, if not better, than some of these 200 million Euro jobs.
There will be some hard questions in the boardrooms if that turns out to be true. We don't know yet, we will only really know in Bahrain, but the indications are that the Cosworth is right up there - in which case it vindicates our cost reduction and does make a nonsense of the 2 billion it has cost.
Q: Luca Marmorini said that Toyota would have spent as much developing a new V10 for this season as they have designing a new V8...
Mosley: Yes, they have got a budget and they will spend it. Whether they need to spend it, is irrelevant. Again, it is the manufacturers mentality. Here is an old story: When we first had Renault involved, Bernie was moving all the cars from Canada to the United States, I think it was Montreal to Long Beach. He had a charter, and had space on it, and offered Renault to put their cars on at an absolute bargain price, about a quarter of what it was going to cost to go normal airfreight.
It was dear old Jean Sage and, to Bernie's amazement, Sage turned him down and said, 'no, we are going to go Lufthansa or Air France'. They told Bernie they had to do it that way, because that was the budget, and if they didn't spend the budget then they would not get the money next year.
Q: But at the end of the day it is difficult to restrict budgets because they are only going to spend what they get
Mosley: The only way they can do it is if the top-management in these companies has to say, 'you don't have 200 million; you have 50 million. And if that is not enough then fine, we will shut the programme down.' After all the screaming and shouting, they will come back and it will be enough, and you will have exactly the same job done for 50 million, particularly if the rules are sensible. But it does take top management to insist.
Q: If you had done nothing to control costs, do you think F1 would be in crisis now?
Mosley: It takes a little time, because people on a small budget run very unsuccessfully. It takes a year or two for them to realise that it is not good. And I think we have seen the classic example of that with the World Rally Championship, I should have got more involved but I just couldn't, where it just got too expensive. It was obviously too expensive, and it was hard to justify what was going on, and then inevitably manufacturers start pulling out.
And IRL is another example where... that is more to do with who won and who didn't win, but it was noticeable that the manufacturer who didn't win simply pulled out.
Q: Do you think the manufacturers understand that now?
Mosley: I don't think, they have this very short-term outlook. They don't see the thing very far into the future. The big department want to keep it and then everyone in F1 convinces themselves that they are going to win.
Back in whenever, before the first race (of a season), even if you were quite a humble team, you would think quite seriously about how you would conceal from the other teams the advantage you had developed over the winter because of the research you had done. And then it becomes clear that that hasn't happened, and then after about four or five races, you realise it definitely hasn't happened. And then you start thinking about next year's car, which will definitely be quicker than everyone else's.
That is the sort of mentality, and on a bigger scale they are still doing that now. People think it is going to be alright, they are going to win, and the management will be delighted. There is one manufacturer who is spending more on his F1 engines than 50 percent of the entire dividend to the shareholders...
Q: What about the longer-term future, from 2011, if you freeze the engines from 2008?
Mosley: What we are thinking about is a fuel efficiency formula. There are various reasons for that, apart from it being politically correct. All the manufacturers are working on fuel efficiency, there are some very interesting things going on, and if there is a big oil crisis - which is more than likely in the next few years - then it will be far more defensible if we can say, 'actually we are working on the cutting edge of fuel efficiency.'
It would either be a limited quantity of fuel to do the best you can, which is the simplest in a way, or a more sophisticated one in saying we will have a fuel valve, where the flow rate was a function of rpm so it was efficient through the whole range of the engine.
There is more explaining to the public, then, than if you say they are only allowed 150-200 litres of fuel for a race. Nowadays you would not get that thing of running out of fuel or even backing off because their strategy would be completely geared up around it.
Q: You can already get commercial fuel that is friendlier for the environment. Are we going down any of those routes in the next couple of years?
Mosley: The fuel for 2008 is anyway going to be 5.75 percent bio-fuel, because that is coming in in 2010 for the whole of the EU, and we didn't want to be behind. But there is an argument that if we go to fuel efficiency of going for a fuel like E85 - which is 85 percent ethanol and is available in the States in small quantities, or something of that kind.
But, again, once we have got the championship, we know who is competing, we will want to sit down with them and talk about 2011 and agree before the end of this year so everyone can have a sensible, low-key, ongoing R&D programme. The manufacturers are doing work on injectors, and spray patterns, and it has a dramatic effect on fuel-efficiency, and it would be very sensible to start working that, but you need a long lead-time, otherwise it just costs a fortune.
Q: Looking even longer ahead, say 20 years from now, are you confident that motorsport has got a healthy future? What are the key changes we will see in the sport?
Mosley: I think it is very healthy, fundamentally healthy, if you start at the grass roots. Increasingly you are not going to be able to drive a car in a Jeremy Clarkson style on the roads, it will get more and more difficult, so competition at the lower level will be more and more attractive from track days upwards.
Plus cars are getting much, much safer now, so in the lowest level of competition you are almost able to do it in a standard road car, unlike a few years ago where if you rolled it over it would collapse and so on. I think as a safety valve, saying to them 'if you want to drive quick then we can accommodate you', then it has got a very healthy future.
Further up the scale, it depends entirely on the governing body from a national and international level, keeping control of the thing so the costs don't get out of hand. The thing that destroys these formulae is costs, it gets too expensive, and then only a few people can afford it - and it then collapses, because it is not interesting.
The classic example is when they used to allow WRC cars into small rallies, it is like me being able to do the Lydden Hill Formula Libre race in a Williams. It probably wouldn't make any difference now, but it is the principle. So you had the odd rich person with a huge advantage, and it doesn't make for good motorsport.
I don't want to give the impression of being obsessive, but this cost thing, the fundamental problem with motorsport is that it is expensive and therefore the less expensive you make it the more of a sport it will be. That is true at every level. If we do that, it will be very healthy.
Q: But burning lots of fuel up is out of tune with the rest of the world, isn't it?
Mosley: The thing is that all motorsport needs is energy, and there is no energy shortage, there is just a few fuel problems. And there are endless different fuels and energy available and we have to move away from hydrocarbon fuels because they will run out, but I don't see that as a difficulty.
For example, we are planning in 2009 to bring in a hybrid for F1 and that is already a step in the right direction. It will be a different technology to the current road cars because it is very large quantities of energy in and very large quantities coming out again, but it is a technology that is coming. They will need this for trucks and buses and things like that. It is using capacitors rather than batteries. And it will be interesting, because a driver will have a go-faster button, 60bhp more or less.
Q: Will that boost system be limited?
Mosley: What we are thinking about is a system that it limited by weight, so it will be 50kg. And that will consist of a motor and capacitors and bits and pieces that make the electricity go in and out, with the motor serving as a generator. And that could produce about 300 kilojoules, which is 60bhp for five seconds.
But you would not be able to charge it at every corner, because you only brake for one second. And although a full F1 car under braking generates about 2500bhp (in energy), you cannot take much of that, so over one lap you would probably be able to accumulate the 300 kilojoules.
Q: What are your predictions for the season ahead?
Mosley: Do you know, I really don't know. And that is nice. You can think of all sorts of reasons for why five different people could be really, really competitive, so your chances of getting it wrong are about 4-1. I would rather not say. I think it looks terrific and we may be surprised.
Q: Moving away from F1. WRC is going through a rebuilding year in terms of manufacturer interest. What is your feeling on the stage of the sport?
Mosley: Well, I think it is a great pity that we have lost some of the manufacturers and I think it was entirely predictable because it became too expensive, and we didn't take action quick enough - we should have done something dramatic several years ago.
But I kept trying to intervene, and then we would get agreement on something and then you would turn away and turn your attention to something else, and when you turn back again it has gone back to square one. The old dog gets back in the armchair as soon as your back is turned.
What is clear to me, is that what has been going on in F1 is an enormous amount of work and effort to get to where we are, over a couple of years but very intense over the last six months, and WRC needs the same thing. So that was the idea of getting Jacques Regis to do it, but his lifestyle and the life he wants to lead just doesn't allow that to happen. You have really got to be in there at 9:00am and leave at 6:00pm and work on it all the time.
Q: Is someone in place to replace him yet?
Mosley: No. He is going to go on until March 22, the World Council, but who to have instead is an open question. We must get the right person.
Q: Going back to the deal that was done with the manufacturers in 2003...that you can have traction control if you will supply teams with affordable engines. They welched on that. What legacy does that leave in your and Bernie's mind?
Mosley: I don't know about Bernie. With me, I don't think you can rely on them. To put it crudely, you cannot trust them. I have had this discussion with Bernie and at one time we were saying, why don't we simply have a rule that says if you want to be in F1 as a manufacturer, then why don't you have to supply a certain number of teams - rather like the tyre rule.
So the number of teams you have to supply is a function of the manufacturers, so if there are six manufacturers it is a maximum of two, if there are four it is a maximum of three and so on. And then I remember saying to Bernie, 'what happens if two of them pull out?' Because big companies just say we are going to stop, we say they cannot because they have got a contract and they will just say, here is a cheque, or sue me. So there you are in Melbourne, with eight cars on the grid, no engines for the others and a wonderful lawsuit, but you haven't got much of a Grand Prix.
I think, to be brutally realistic, you cannot rely on the manufacturers. It is not their job; it is not their business. F1 to them is just like buying television advertising or any other means of marketing their cars, in contrast to Frank Williams where it is his core business. He doesn't have another business; this is what he does.
You have to arrange your affairs so you are not relying on the manufacturers, and if they don't like it, you say to them, 'well this is the world championship, and if you want to compete, these are the terms. If you don't want to compete, you don't have to.'
This is really what we are saying to them now; we are very pleased if you want to compete, but you are going to do it on our terms. We are not going to put the F1 championship on your terms, because we know when the day comes that it doesn't suit you any more, you will be gone.
How many times have they done this? Look what they did in rallies and look at IRL, where they were competing to get teams, they gave money to teams, they got the teams to expand their financial base to a point beyond what could be sustained with money from ordinary sponsorship and then one of them said, we are going to stop. And then the other one said, alright, we will supply everyone with engines but with no money.
They seem to think that because they are big companies, somehow F1 belongs to them, but it doesn't. It is our championship from a sporting point of view, it is Bernie's championship from a commercial point of view and the partners in this are the independent teams. They are the people who we have to look after.
Q: Since they didn't honour their side of the agreement, you must have mentioned it to them. I wonder what response they offer?
Mosley: They have never actually come back. What is interesting is that, you remember on January 15th 2003, when we brought in the measures using the powers we already had under regulations...we said there was parc ferme etc. They sort of knew something was coming and they wrote the previous day, which was when the letter came from one of the major companies saying they were going to supply engines for 10 million Euros.
Poor little Eddie Jordan turned up there with his 10 million Euros, and astonishingly there was no engine. He actually was giving serious thought to suing. They are lovely people, the manufacturers, but we should just say, here is the entry form, fill it in if you want to come, but don't talk to us about what you are going to do and what you are not going to do.
Q: If the World Council approves your 'window of opportunity', are you expecting the manufacturers to sign up?
Mosley: I don't know what is going to happen. I think maybe one of them might, but you just don't know because there are all sorts of layers of management and egos. I read on the web somewhere that this whole plan was going to collapse because you will get all these independent people entering, but the manufacturers will then come along and buy their teams and that would completely stuff my plan. Well it is so blindingly obvious...that is why they would enter.
Imagine Gerhard Berger sitting there with his team and BMW come along and want to buy it. You can image how much that is going to cost. Meanwhile there are the regulations, the things they are fighting over, to which the team they have just bought are bound.
Q: If there is only a limited amount of time with the 'window of opportunity', how will that attract new entries?
Mosley: You see, the people that I know are interested know that this is in prospect. I think they will be ready to go, and if there is a vacancy or two we do have a provision for accepting an entry later on, but we may find that there are fewer vacancies than people left.
Q: But with no $48 million deposit needed, how do you stop the chancers who will try and get an entry and then hope to sell it on?
Mosley: You can't. You apply the existing thing, you look at their possibilities, their finances, their factory, what they have got and you take a decision. It is hard to predict what is going to happen, but one thing is for sure: we will flush everyone out