The FIA is hoping to have the 2013 financial rules formalised by the end of this month. Autosport revealed yesterday that Jean Todt is keen for moves to be taken that will help secure the future of the sport, amid concerns from some teams about rising costs. Those efforts are focused on trying to frame a type of Resource Restriction Agreement into the 2013 regulations - which will be policed by the FIA. The June 30 date is significant because it is the late day that 2013 regulations can be changed with only majority support from the teams. The FIA also said that it hoped to finalise the terms for a Concorde Agreement in the next few weeks â and that that matter was sorted there was little point in proceeding with official entries for the 2013 championship. It was therefore decided that rather than stick with the normal July 15 deadline for entries for next year, that the closing off point would be in September instead. Can these resource controls really be policed again what are essentially geniuses?
It won't work for the simple reason that Ferrari are outwardly saying they want cost control, yet at the same time everyone knows their success relies on their larger budget. So there will be loopholes (the major one will be that driver/staff salaries do not count I should imagine) which will duly be exploited, as Red Bull have allegedly done with the RRA these last few years.
Interesting suggestion from Gary Anderson. He says that the FIA could freeze the car specification for three batches of six races, giving the teams two wildcard races for which they can modify their cars. This would attempt to tackle the vast waste and expense of developing a car during the season.
I don't like that at all, I love watching the development race unfold and seeing what updates teams are bringing to their cars.
Cost control is a good idea in theory, but it's far too easy to flout it, especially for the car manufacturers (in other words, Ferrari)
Does anyone know what the real driving force behind this is? Why are a team like Ferrari so desperate to bring costs down? HRT and Marussia have been comically unprofessional in their first two and a half years, they rarely get to testing, their cars are miles off the pace, Virgin tried to design their entire car using CFD and couldn't carry enough fuel to complete races early on; HRT bought their first car from Dallara and have only just made their minds up where they want to base their team. In spite of all this, both teams have survived. Things will only get easier as the teams learn more and begin to operate more smoothly. So presumably the cost cutting isn't aimed at keeping teams in the sport, and surely it's not about making them competitive. Why would established, professional race outfits want to get beaten by these teams? It would destroy them as a brand. Ferrari seem to be more vocal about this than other teams, F1 is their only significant form of marketing, they have to be seen to be winning. I wonder if they're trying to make the economic situation look more severe than it is to try and prevent the V6s going through, the V8 is far more inline with Ferrari's road cars, and perhaps they've struggled with the development of the new engines and fear losing ground when they have to use them. Maybe they're being hit by the struggling Italian economy, or perhaps Santander are struggling and Ferrari fear losing sponsorship. As a company they're pretty small compared to Mercedes and Red Bull and might fear they can't compete with them financially, so they could be trying to blunt their spending power. I don't really get all this. I understand the need to cut unnecessary spending, but budget caps and homologated car specs are so extreme. There was talk of restricting teams to employing a maximum of 280 people, well under half of what the top teams currently employ, meaning hundreds of people being laid off in Europe at a time when unemployment is at a record high. Here's what Luca di Montezemolo has had to ay on the matter:
They are owned by Fiat and the Italian economy is totally ****ed (unsurprising when you consider that gangsters run everything), maybe they're just trying to make sure they can afford to stay in F1.
