Monday, June 20, 2005

SPEEDTV.com F1 Cuts by 2008

SPEEDTV.com: "FIA Unveils Radical Proposal to Cut F1 Costs by 90 Percent
Written by: Cassio Cortes Paris, France ��� 6/16/2005

FIA president Max Mosley has long argued with F1's manufacturers over the need to reduce the sport's costs. (LAT Photo)

The FIA has issued today (Thursday) a radical blueprint for Formula 1���s regulations from 2008 onwards, when the current Concorde Agreement expires.

Citing the pressing need to cut costs dramatically, in view of the sport���s loss of two teams (Arrows and Prost) and one manufacturer (Ford) in recent years, the proposition is set to stir intense controversy, as its ���retrograde��� approach on most technology-related issues is certain to displease many at Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Renault, Toyota and Honda, the sport���s largest manufacturers, which are allied under the GPWC banner and threaten to quit F1 in ���08.

According to the FIA, the sum of what all manufacturers spend in the sport could drop from 1.5 billion euros (1.8b dollars) to as little as 150 million if all items proposed are pressed forward.

���Formula 1 must not be allowed to become a money-spending competition,��� today's release stated. ���We need more emphasis on rules which allow a clever but underfunded team to defeat a less competent but richer rival. It must not be possible simply to buy success.

���This is essential for the survival of fully independent teams.���

Although the project would obviously degrade F1 from its current NASA-like technological plateau, the FIA sustained that to be a good thing: ���It is sometimes suggested that reducing the scope for expenditure in Formula 1 reduces its technical interest or ���dumbs it down.���

���The immediate question is: reduces its technical interest to whom? It may fascinate the relevant engineers that by spending millions of euros they can build a new gearbox with ratios that are 0.25mm thinner, but no-one else knows or cares. There is no additional value for the watching public who, ultimately, pay for the whole"

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