Budget Cap vs. Bernie
Ferrari announced today that they won’t enter their cars into the 2010 F1 championship if the FIA pushes through the two tier budget system. Redbull and Toyota have also voiced concerns over these new rules and have threatened the same course of action, though they drew little attention for these statements. Ferrari are at the heart of F1 and it would be a very different sport without them, Bernie has even come out and said that he won’t let it happen.
The crux of the matter is the idea to allow teams to subscribe to a £40m budget cap in exchange for less stringent rules for development of the cars. I can’t see how this is a way to cut the costs in F1, make the teams with the money leave in exchange for letting a few unknown teams join the championship. It seems that this will drive down the revenues and make it an even harder sport to compete in. The alternative is to have the tiered system and effectively two championships in one, much like classes in other formulas. This will do nothing to make the sport easier to understand and I’m not sure anyone would be able to convince Ferrari that the budget cap would limit the effectiveness of these teams with Brawn currently beating everyone.
The precedent for these types of disagreements is that the teams form a collalition and threaten to form a break away series, the FIA says that this is the way it is and then Bernie calls a meeting and it all gets sorted out. I can’t see these measures being implemented as per the current proposals because of the statements from an increasing number of the teams, there is no F1 without the teams, and in my view there is no real F1 without Ferrari. I guess we’ll find out in the near future as registration for the 2010 season is due in May I believe.
Good Hunting
Simple solution. Dissolve the FIA, remove Max and Bernies 25% cut of F1 profits, split that to teams who have reduced budget. Everyone happy.
It’s wrong, that it is only 1 of the top sports in the world ruled by a commercial organisation. Let FOTA run it I say.
It’s so hypercritical - Bernine and Spanky Max are happy for Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, etc. to spend 60m each on developing kers because we want to look like a green sport and it helps us, then say, hold on, next season, you can only spend 40m on your entire setup. It’s wrong.
Sorry, but for me, top teams, are top team because they win, and have the most fans, and therefore the most money. They therefore deserve to reward those fans by investing their (the fans) money back into the team to make them win.
p.s nice to see your blog back up and running. Great pics of Libby!