Here’s a round-up of F1 news and other interesting links I’ve found today.
If you’ve spotted a hot news story, interesting new website or just something funny from the world of F1, please share your links in the comments below.
Mercedes take initiative in Formula One row
"Haug's plan – the “Mercedes initiative” – allows the teams to spend no more than £100 million next season, in return for which they will offer help to new teams, in terms of cheap components and shared expertise. In addition, the teams will commit to Formula One until the end of 2012 and will agree to operate under a £40 million cap from 2011."
Noise of F1 testing is just ‘unbearable’
"Families in Thriplow and Whittlesford, several miles away from the site, have complained about the din from the Renault team's trials."
These are links I’ve bookmarked using Delicious. You can see my Delicious profile here.
TommyB
28th May 2009, 20:53
Mercedes plan to save F1 – Stop giving Brawn engines :P JOKE!!
Sounds a good idea and good on Mercedes trying to help others
HounslowBusGarage
28th May 2009, 20:56
Just read the Times article ‘Mercedes takes the initiative . . .’ wherein Ed Gorman describes Norbert Haug as “little known”. I would have thought you would need to be living in a mud hut in Burkina Faso not to know about Big Norbie.
Anyway, he has apparently suggested a plan for a £100m cap for next year and a £40m cap for the year after, plus a largescale programme of shared components and skills. Max seems to be supportive.
If this goes through, it will be almost exactly as I predicted. F1 is too big a business to allow it to fail.
But I still think that some of the manufacturers will leave and that no new teams will join until 2011 when the cap descends to £40m.
beneboy
28th May 2009, 21:17
If Renault, or any other team, want to come test around here I promise not to complain about the noise, as long as I can come watch :-)
Tom
29th May 2009, 0:02
i agree entirely. they don’t know what their missing. i’d love to have a test track/GP next door.
persempre
28th May 2009, 21:36
LOL – I saw that & thought much the same, too.
As to the article, I`m not sure the figures are right & there needs to be more on the governance side. So I`ll just continue to wait to see what happens.
Lewis
28th May 2009, 21:57
£100m is more like it. Some of the big car companies have spent more than that on marketing one model…
I’m still worried about how the budget cap – any budget cap – would be enforced. Companies like Toyota, BMW, Mercedes and Ferrari will be able to hide some of their R&D away in their passenger car programmes, and the Red Bull / Toro Rosso question is unresolved still.
Bigbadderboom
28th May 2009, 22:32
Gutted about renault testing, I only work 15 mins from Duxford, god I wish i knew…………
Duxford have some heavy aircraft shows there and it always has something going on, I can’t believe they make less noise than a Renault.
StrFerrari4Ever
29th May 2009, 0:00
Great to see that German common sense is there to save the day in the form of Mr Haug. If this goes through does this mean the capped regulations of unrestricted engines and all those other juicy technical freedoms are allowed with the proposed £100mill. If so qualifying speeds next year will be off the charts can’t wait :) and Toro Rosso said they are already in position to design their 2010 car even more reason to celebrate :D
DGR-F1
29th May 2009, 8:22
The BBC website is suggesting that some of the new teams (USF1, Lola etc) are already in the queue today to put their names on Max’s list of entries for 2010.
So, if the current teams leave it too long, they may find themselves being told ‘sorry we are full’, which might be a tad embarrasing for McLaren, Ferrari etc.
Norbert’s ideas sound great in theory, but won’t it make F1 more like Formula Mercedes if all the new cars use their engines and components? And wouldn’t that upset Ferrari even more?
And why does it take Norbert to suggest an obvious compromise for next year when there are supposedly clever people (Luca, Briatore, Whitmarsh etc) involved with the teams? I vote Norbert for head of FOTA next year!
Adrian
29th May 2009, 12:10
That’s got the be the first time I’ve heard Briatore described as “clever”!!
DGR-F1
1st June 2009, 13:14
ahem, I said ‘Supposedly Clever’ :-)
HounslowBusGarage
29th May 2009, 9:08
That’s exactly what Max said a couple of weeks ago. He went on to speculate that in that situation, the only recourse for late signing teams would be to buy out one of the new entrant teams.
Jimbo
29th May 2009, 9:33
Will that come out of the budget for 2010 though?
PJA
29th May 2009, 9:55
A budget cap of £40m still seems a bit on the low side for the supposedly top motorsport series in the world, but if it still doesn’t include engines, driver salaries and marketing it won’t be that bad.
The correct way to implement any budget cap was always going to be a gradual reduction not a sudden reduction to 10% of some team’s current budgets in one year. The main thing should be that we have one set of regulations.
I don’t know if anyone else has suggested this but when some of the big teams like Ferrari and McLaren downsize their F1 operations to meet the budget cap, if it was financially viable, it would be good if instead of sacking lots of staff to instead start up racing teams in different series.
So we still could have Ferrari competing at Le Man, and hopefully this would mean it would be easier for the F1 drivers to drive in other series as well.
Rob
29th May 2009, 10:09
Like Bigbadderboom I work very close to Duxford and also feel frustrated that I missed out on seeing the Renault in action! However what a bunch of whingers… Duxford can be very noisy anyway with all the planes (and not just at airshow time) and frankly if I couldn’t hear it from just 3 miles down the road it cant have been that noisy! (The land’s very flat here so noise travels a long way)
Mind you it was reported in the Cambridge Evening News which ranks somewhere below the Daily Mail for reliability in my estimation…
joe
29th May 2009, 10:21
is a budget cap not going agaist what govements are doing trying to pump money into the economy? By spending millions on marketing thats alot of money going to people who work in marketing, and by testing more thats more money for people working track side and in f1 development
joe
29th May 2009, 10:51
is a budget cap not going agaist what govements are doing trying to pump money into the economy? By spending millions on marketing thats alot of money going to people who work in marketing, and by testing more thats more money for people working track side and in f1 development
P.S. – Sorry, forgot to tell you great post!
persempre
29th May 2009, 11:25
I`m still amazed that Max seems to have got so many people thinking that the fault for the enormous amounts spent on F1 is all the teams’ faults.
The FIA brought in the multi-million bond which stopped small teams lodging entries. They also tightened the rules which meant a fortune had to be spent to find the smallest margin of success.
Add to that the ever-changing regulations & lack of clarity in certain of those rules which have meant teams spending millions to alter cars &, all in all, I think the blame lays squarely with Max & the FIA.
He`s just done a very good job at shifting blame.
Laconic
3rd June 2009, 6:07
An excellent observation, and one with which I agree 100%
Imagine F1 without Max…and for that matter, without Bernie. I’d agree with both Max and Bernie that it’s time for big changes in F1 –the door is this way, Gentlemen.
Hopefully we all will get lucky, and Mad Max won’t run for re-election(oh, joyous thought, that).
And maybe Bernie will take a hint, too (keep up the good work, Sir Jackie). Well, I can dream, can’t I?
Chaz
30th May 2009, 21:06
Big respect to Norbert and the folks at Mercedes for this intervention.
Perhaps Williams could start talking to Mercedes for engines that is if they don’t go for the Cosworth engines, assuming toyota pull out next year as is much speculated.
Playing devils advocate, is there perhaps a perseption the sport may suffer credibility issues if too many cars end up with Mercedes engines…