How can F1 secure itself in the economic and beyond?

[chillibowl]

keep travel costs down and strengthen the base...sound stratagey during lean times.

along those lines, drop the promoter fees and let countries host races for free (aside for track maintainence, insurance, and wages).

generally build up some goodwill, something the car companies will need when begging the governements of the world for handouts.

[the sniper]

I really think the only way for Formula 1 to get out of it's current situation is for CVC to go bust, and I don't think this is too far away. We're getting to the point that circuits can no longer afford F1, but CVC can't afford to take in less money because it has to pay it's debts. Obviously though, circuits can live without the loss making F1 races, but the F1 circus needs circuits to race on, so no circuits = no races = no F1 = no more CVC.

Out of the ashes though a new F1 will rise, hopefully ran by a cooperative of the teams and manufacturers that take part. That sounds rather familiar, doesn't it...

[duke_toaster]

If CVC were to be in trouble, the best solution would ideally be FOTA to buy it, as a co-operative of the teams, car builders and possibly broadcasters.

[the sniper]

Originally Posted by duke_toaster

If CVC were to be in trouble, the best solution would ideally be FOTA to buy it, as a co-operative of the teams, car builders and possibly broadcasters.

This would be the ideal, but I doubt the teams/manufactures have enough money to buy it out now. They should have brought it when CVC did.

Your mention of a broadcaster buying in is a interesting point. I could see the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) being interested as they have a lot of their members money to play with. They normally make big money bids on behalf of their members for large sports events like the World Cup and Olympics, so F1 could be seen as a good investment opportunity.

[Oldtony]

Have to disagree with you Marbot.
Like all developments in pure science or high end technology things like carbon fibre gearboxes and the knowledge gained of material perfomance (or failiure) in carbonfibre suspension parts is an advancement in knowledge. Getteing an extra 50bhb out of a 2.4ltr v8 spinning at 20,000 rpm certainly involves increased knowledge of gas flow at sonic speed, of flame and burn patterns and of the design and material structure of engine internals to withstand the extra strain.
Tend to agree with you about the wind tunnels though, but even there the research into airflow around vehicles moving at high speeb within ground effect maybe usefull in very high speed train design.
By contrast what does Bernie's wealth, Ron's motorhomes, Kimi, Nando, Jensen or Hammo's salaries and perks, all the VIP (read half baked Celebs) hospitality etc contribute?

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by Oldtony

Have to disagree with you Marbot.

Is it really necessary that we know what the 'burn pattern' is at 20,30 or even 40,000 rpm ?

On cost alone,carbon fibre gearboxes will never find their way onto most road cars and even on the high end cars that may have them it's more of a luxury than a necessity.It's important that road vehicles are efficient,but they also have to be cost effective in most cases.No ones going to buy a Honda Civic if it's high tech gearbox adds six grand to the list price.

Originally Posted by Oldtony

Tend to agree with you about the wind tunnels though, but even there the research into airflow around vehicles moving at high speeb within ground effect maybe usefull in very high speed train design.

Then let the train companies spend the money on it.

Originally Posted by Oldtony

By contrast what does Bernie's wealth, Ron's motorhomes, Kimi, Nando, Jensen or Hammo's salaries and perks, all the VIP (read half baked Celebs) hospitality etc contribute?

They don't,but they're more newsworthy than a $1200 wheelnut.

[Oldtony]

On that summation Marbot, Britney spears is more iportant than Steven Hawking, Clarke Gable contributed more to humanity than Einstien, and decoding the genome is a waste of money that could be spent on booze ups for B grade celebrities.

[Casper]

Ban the transistor and IC. Simple really.

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by Marbot

Another fifty horsepower from a 2.4 V8 petrol engine spinning at 20,000 rpm is not "faintly usefull"

Due to the technical warfare a Formula 1 engine is about 20% more fuel efficient than the most economical road cars. All that fuel efficiency is not used to reduce the fuel consumption but to get more power out of the same amount of fuel.

But indeed, a 2.4 litre V8 normally aspirated engine isn't road relevent really. However, it remains a question what engine configuration is. A 1.2 litre V4 turbocharged engine? A 1.5 litre L4 normally aspirated engine with a hybrid battery? We don't simply don't know. Why don't we allow the manufactures to find out and make the engine regulations totally free? If the costs are becoming too high we could, although I wouldn't like it, increase the engine's life span. Why not having an engine lasting the entire season?

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by Oldtony

On that summation Marbot, Britney spears is more iportant than Steven Hawking, Clarke Gable contributed more to humanity than Einstien, and decoding the genome is a waste of money that could be spent on booze ups for B grade celebrities.

Like it or not,Britney spears is more important to some people than Steven Hawking.

I'm not sure that all of Einsteins work contributed to "humanity".

Decoding the genome is something that F1 Engineers should get right on straight away,then maybe we can make safer drivers as well as safer cars.

[P38 in workshop]

Perhaps it would move things forward if the European Union investigated the manner in which the commercial rights to Formula One were allocated and subsequently traded.They might also consider the way in which the income generated by the activities of the participants is distributed.
The points made in earlier posts about the limited real world application of carbon suspension or gearbox cases are entirely valid and a return to the use of metal for these components would reduce costs immediately.Another point would be to limit ballast to ten kilograms as it might discourage the design and engineering of very clever lightweight structures,at huge cost,solely to allow the use of ballast as a performance aid.Not too hard to do if a minimum centre of gravity height is mandated.
The problem is that if a simplified Formula One survives,what will mark it out as different from GP2 if there are no avenues of development left?

[Bononi]

Originally Posted by Marbot

Like it or not,Britney spears is more important to some people than Steven Hawking.

It's hard to believe that people still rank Britney Spears when they have the likes of Megan Fox or Jessica Alba around... just to name a few. Regarding Stephen Hawking, I guess is just lack of a good advertising and PR, "A brief history of Time" sounds like a quickie and not exactly makes the whole world pay attention. And let's be honest, being a scientist, someone should tell him that his name is widely mistaken by a much more famous writer of bizarre things, the other "Stephen" (King) You know, people commonly think that "Black hole" is the name of a monster, not to mention others not very polite depictions...

Originally Posted by Marbot

I'm not sure that all of Einsteins work contributed to "humanity".

I think we can say that relatively all of his works had a contribution, good or bad...

Originally Posted by Marbot

Decoding the genome is something that F1 Engineers should get right on straight away,then maybe we can make safer drivers as well as safer cars.

Just don't let Microsoft touch that code, we might never evolve again...

[foreversideways]

You can never write a route plan to the future. Formula one can and will change because of necessity. I said a long time ago that building F1 around the manufacturers was a mistake as when times get tough you will see no loyalty from them. Honda are probably going to turn out to be the ones who pushed the doors open for some of the others to dash through. Were going to see a return to something akin to the Cosworth era with possibly Ferrari still building their own car and engine and perhaps one or two manufacturers providing engines to the others. This would actually be a great thing, as currently the barriers to entry into Formula One are massive and frankly it's been stagnating.

[Marbot]

Isn't it just ever so slightly ironic that a V8 Cosworth may once again be the 'back bone' of F1.

[Marbot]

In this article Mercedes are saying that costs should be cut by at least 50% (still not enough Norbert) and BMW basically seem to be saying (in their own version of 'Ron-speak') 'we don't really give a **** how much it costs'.

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=36695

[Peter Mallett]

Britney Spears? I would.................................

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Britney Spears? I would.................................

So would I ! But is she more important than Steven Hawking ?

And more to the point: Has she any practical use in securing the future of F1 ?

[Peter Mallett]

Depends on the circs. Just like Toyota, Merc, BMW etc. are they more important than racing?

[Marbot]

Are they 'racing' teams or 'technology' teams?

'Racing' seems to have been hi-jacked by the manufacturers and replaced with the imposter known as 'technology overkill'.

All hail to the king 'technology overkill'!

[Peter Mallett]

Gosh, there's a surprise.

[Ryongyong]

The manufacturers are completely to blame for this as virtually all the problems that have been caused are down to them trying to hijack what is supposed to be a sport (of sorts) and turn it into a very expensive advertisement for the benefit of them and them only. Everything they've done has made F1 a worse, rather than better, spectacle. We all knew that they'd be happy to drop everything and bog off the moment they got bored, which would have been fine had they formed their own team out of nothing, as the number of cars on the grid would have risen and then fallen back again to where it was before as they left with their tails between their legs. The problem is that for the most part they've been going around buying teams that already existed, meaning that the actual number of cars on the grid has remained the same, and then subsequently dropped by two when they've got bored and closed down their operations. So now we're looking at possibly 18 cars (although actually for once because of the specific circumstances here I think that someone might buy Honda's operations, but that's for another thread) on the grid, and, the terror of even less if other manufacturers walk away suddenly.

But why are the teams having to close down? Because F1 has become so expensive, and why is that? Again purely because of the new manufacturers throwing money around like lunatics in an attempt to beat each other. As we have seen, it has made it impossible for the independent teams who have only been able to rely on sponsorship rather than $200m+ subsidies from major international corporations for their development, so they have been put under major pressure too. Again then, the reason for the massive expense in the last 5-10 years has been due to the ridiculous amount of money the manufacturers have been given, and the reason that no other independent teams have wanted to go anywhere near F1 is because of the hugely skewed stakes caused directly by the rich manufacturer teams.

The high costs have in turn affected the way we see F1 too, with the drivers being transformed into corporate drones who never say anything of any interest because the massive amounts of cash invested mean that it would be too risky to say anything even slightly controversial (and let's not even get started on the fact that drivers are ordered by the teams not to take risks on the tracks any more, meaning that the amount of overtaking or even overtaking attempts has been so low). And I really don't see how you can say that races have been more interesting just because we've seen Toyotas and Hondas pootling around at the back instead of Fortis and Minardis; I don't know what it's done for car sales (not much by the looks of things) so even people who aren't actually fans of F1 don't seem very impressed to be seeing brands they recognise driving on the track as opposed to the names we used to see in the past.

So what can be done? Well, for now, I think that nothing can be done to sort things out and we will have to wait for the manufacturers to pull out one-by-one, and suffer the tiny grid numbers that will result in that. But afterwards, something has to be done to stop them ruining our sport again, because you can bet that they will. The moment they are gone, the costs to be competitive will again be much lower, so you can bet that one of them will say 'let's go back now, it's much cheaper now so it'll be easier to be competitive for less money, and we'll get more exposure', and then their nearest commercial rival will join in too, and then another, and then we'll be in this horrible situation we're in now once more. To them, this sport is just their commercial plaything. So, to stop this happening again, or at least to mitigate any effect they might have, I think one rule that would be useful would be prevent teams from being directly sold to anyone else, to force manufacturers to add two more cars to the grid so that when it all goes wrong again and the manufacturers walk off in a huff back to their boardrooms we just go back to where we started rather than to something less. Another thing would be perhaps to regulate spending so that it comes from sponsorships or limited amounts of personal wealth rather than apparently unlimited (until they suddenly stop that is) bankrolling from a large corporation, which seems to have been part of the reason things have become so expensive. But this would be hard to regulate of course. Thing is though, it's just too risky to let the manufactures have so much power over the sport we all love because they don't care about it and could leave it at any moment and it would be us that would be snoozing our way through the races looking at the 10 cars racing around. I think that if we give it a few years and enact rules to prevent this from happening again, we could be looking at a good era, where things are simply naturally cheaper because there won't be the same ridiculously skewed playing field, which will mean that other people may want to come and form a team too, and we could again see nice healthy grid sizes, less boring drivers with less boring driving styles, and less money being spent on trying to create 'dirty air' behind cars to prevent them from being overtaken. And that would be great. But next time let's just make sure that when the big boys burst in and say that they want to play too, we remember the carnage they caused last time that happened.

[Peter Mallett]

Did you (and anyone else) buy a programme at one of the races you went to? Of course you did in which case you agreed with what you saw like the rest of us because it is F1.

Life is changing but don't blame the manufacturers, they should never have been there anyway!

[Adam43]

We are probably coming out of the longest period of consistent team involvement in F1. I don't think you can consider this manufacturer era as short lived. Teams have come and gone, owners come and gone, throughout the history of F1.

It is not like we have never seen this before.

[Pingguest]

Originally Posted by AdamAshmore

We are probably coming out of the longest period of consistent team involvement in F1. I don't think you can consider this manufacturer era as short lived. Teams have come and gone, owners come and gone, throughout the history of F1.

It is not like we have never seen this before.

Very good point, Adam. It makes you wonder why we should artificially try to keep the manufactures in.

[Oldtony]

Originally Posted by AdamAshmore

We are probably coming out of the longest period of consistent team involvement in F1. I don't think you can consider this manufacturer era as short lived. Teams have come and gone, owners come and gone, throughout the history of F1.

It is not like we have never seen this before.

Spot on Adam.
At team level the sport is Darwinian, and there are a whole range of reasons why teams do not survive, not nessecarily related to on track achievment.
My feeling is that there is not a lot wrong with the sport at team level, or even with the involvement of the manufactureres.
The big problem is how the income is distributed and until the teams get together and do something about the "commercial rights" holder ther will never be a way to recover costs.
Those who say we should go back to the era of Formula DFV, the garagistes, or assemblatori or whatever term of endearment Enzo was using at the time have a perfectly valid point if they see F1 as "just a sport". If they want it to remain a world wide competition, a series of major events with very high public exposure, then loosing the manufacturers will see it drop back to comparative obscurity.
Someone started a thread called What is Formula One and the Mods closed it after just a couple of posts. Why? It is a perfectly valid question, and right now there are many wondering how we get back to a situation where the sport, the business, the showbiz and the competition are balanced.
And just to open another can of worms can anyone come up with a balanced explanation of the term "road relevance". Does it mean something that bolts onto next years Focus/Golf/Corolla, or does it include the exploration of exotic materials, concepts and alternate uses of technology?