Well last night there was big, really big, news.
Bernie Ecclestone and F1 to welcome customer cars for 2016 season
Paul Weaver,The Guardian
Sunday 9 November 2014 09.55 EST
Bernie Ecclestone and Formula One have decided to turn their backs on the smaller teams in the sport as they move towards customer cars in 2016, when the big names will provide all the cars for the grid.
The process will start next season when Red Bull and Ferrari will each run three cars. Then, the following year, newcomers Haas will be Ferrari’s first customers under the new setup as the sport increasingly comes under control of the Big Five: Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren and Williams.
It will ultimately mean the end of teams such as Force India, Lotus and Sauber who have had their appeal for a more democratic share of the money generated by the sport thrown back in their faces.
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The grim news of customer cars was given to the teams when they met with Ecclestone on Saturday night, and was met with abject horror, though this is what some of the smaller teams have been warning about for years now.
One prominent insider said on Sunday, just before the start of the Brazilian Grand Prix: “This is a sleazy and appalling way to go about it.”
What exactly are “customer cars”? They are basically extra chassis/powerplant combos that combined with the standard Pirelli tires are about 98% of a racecar. They will be sold to teams, for a price, so that they don’t have to do, or pay for, engineering design bureaus and development teams.
Why, exactly, is this a bad thing?
Most of the true afficiandos (of which I am not one, I just watch the races so I have something to talk about with my Dad) would say the primary negative results will be stifling innovation and forcing uniformity. Formula One has always fancied itself as a breeding ground of cutting edge technology and that reputation would be lost in favor of a more cookie cutter Turn Left, Indy Car approach. The counter argument is that it places more emphasis on driver skills to which I say- What driver skills? Outside a handful of drivers led by Alonso (who can make a brick look racy), Hamilton (who is especially good at passing), and Button (best tire management on the track), none of the current crop seems particularly outstanding except for the ones that are truly bad and buy their seats with sponsorships (what, you didn’t know that drivers pay millions more to their teams than they make in salary and purses and depend on their patrons and endorsements for their real income?).
Speaking of money, this really puts the Littles between a rock and a hard place. The “customer cars” will not be cheap and they don’t really save all that much. A lot of development goes on during the season so there’s a limit to how much you can downsize in engineering and development. They are still basically screwed by the fact that virtually all the revenue sharing, that huge $900 Million cut of $1.5 Billion Bernie the bastard likes to brag about, goes to the big five- Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren, and Williams who also, along with Bernie, control the Strategy Group which is supposed to repesent the interests of all the teams and the management.
They’ve already killed an expense cap for 2015.
Let’s look at these operations-
Red Bull is the only team in position to field 3 cars in 2015 because they’re already fielding 4, Red Bull and Toro Rossa distinguished only by the powerplants, Renault (which sucks) and Ferrari (which sucks worse). Dietrich Mateschitz doesn’t care about how much money he loses, it falls in the rounds of the vast sums he spends promoting his Energy Beverage Empire.
Ferrari really doesn’t have much existence outside of Formula One. Enzo was always race first and oh, let’s sell some very expensive fast luxury cars to pay for it. Enzo is dead and now the operation is run by the suits at Fiat and selling expensive luxury cars is what they’re about. For them also Formula One is mere marketing, it’s kind of like Cadillac competing in Turn Left racing. They make crap and will whore it to anyone, coasting on their reputation of greatness while not really giving a damn. Bernie loves them and gives them sweetheart deals because they have a huge fan base and are ‘the soul of the sport’. They are entirely unlikely to field a third car because they can barely support the two they’ve got.
Mercedes is the only serious player from a manufacturing standpoint and they have it all, an actual Car Company with a racing division. It’s not really a surprise that they’re the only ones who were able to manufacture the new specification engines (with any power or reliability) and in 2015 they’re about to reap the benefits of that. The problem is that they are not above giving their best stuff to their Works team first and holding out on their paying customers. Like Red Bull Formula One is a mere blip on their bottom line marketing budget, but while they’d be happy to sell you things at an exorbitant price they probably won’t field a third car because they have real accountants and it’s marginally ineffective, where is the additional benefit?
McLaren and Williams actually have more in common with the Littles than they do with the Big Three. They are primarily racing teams, not marketing vehicles. They buy most of their tech off the shelf and use their design and development staff to package it in a chassis that innovates enough to keep them competitive, McLaren more than Williams because Williams has been out of contention for so much longer. Like Ferrari both teams are sputtering on the fumes of their reputation, but they don’t even have the consolation of an Automotive giant like Fiat backing their play when it deigns to notice them at all. These teams will never be able to add a third car and are likely to vanish as developers under a “customer car” system leaving only Mercedes (for sure, as long as they don’t get bored or pissed off and leave for 50 years like they did the last time) and Ferarri (maybe, if Fiat lets them) as vendors. Dietrich Mateschitz has no investment besides marketing in Formula One and would be content to have it ‘Formula Red Bull’ with either all the cars wearing his colors or better yet his Harlem Globetrotters beating up the Washington Generals (which would be all the others) every week. He will spend what it takes to win which I have to admire in that George Steinbrenner way, but if he can win with off the rack why waste money?
Haas Racing
Bernie is looking at the U.S. market in a big way. Haas makes his money off his industrial tool business and has been quite successful in the Turn Left and IndyCar world where buy rides are the norm. Now one might think that he’d want to do his own designs to showcase his CNC prowess, but it’s far from a sure thing. In any event he has no plans to race before 2016 and it’s highly unlikely he would be a supplier until it was proven his cars were competative.
Ecclestone’s Hard Place
Most of his track contracts have severe penalty clauses for showing up with less than 14 – 16 cars because of the 2005 U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis where the drivers using Michelins refused to race out of safety considerations and only 6 cars took the track (and the drivers were quite right to do so).
While the 3 Littles (Lotus, Force India, and Sauber) and the one receivership team that is attempting to continue (Caterham, Marussia is done) have filled to race in 2015, were they to withdraw Bernie would only have 12 cars in his traveling show, and the last time “customer cars” were used was likewise a time of low participation-
Three-car teams? F1 has had them before, but things were different back then
By Mike Wise, Sky News
30/10/14 12:46pm
Sixty years ago, Mercedes were entering as many as four cars per race while BRM stretched as far as five in the early-1970s. Meanwhile, the sale of customer cars produced some real ‘David and Goliath’ moments: Stirling Moss beating the might of Ferrari in an old, underpowered Lotus at the 1961 Monaco GP, for example.
That car was entered by Rob Walker, who was also the last private entrant to win a grand prix in 1968. Fields were low around that time too, but the answer came via the simple expedient of bolstering the grid with Formula 2 cars.
F1 was a marginal sport then, with less money floating around and so fewer vested interests. Looking back, the people with most to lose were the drivers themselves: in 1968, four were killed between April and July alone. The arrival of sponsorship that year signposted the future but, as we’re currently seeing, commercial imperatives create different sorts of problems.
The template for two cars-per-team came with the signing of the first Concorde Agreement at the start of 1980s, which also brought an end to the use of customer cars. Of course, the ensuing period has seen F1 turn into a money spinner but a good chunk of its revenues (estimated in total at around $1.5 billion per year) aren’t re-invested in the sport.
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Times are still tough for most, though, and with that in mind the FIA announced its intention to introduce a budget cap in 2015. But those plans didn’t get far: the big teams vetoed them in April.
It’s an outcome that demonstrates just how F1 can’t seem to help itself: that the biggest teams, under the guise of the Strategy Group, have the power to block rule changes they don’t agree with.
The Strategy Group was formed last year as a result of a deal between the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone. Both also sit on the group, which approves proposals by a majority vote. But if there’s a rule the big teams and the commercial rights controller don’t like, they can nip it in the bud.
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In effect, then, the governing body – which you’d think would have a large measure power to legislate the sport it presides over – can’t do anything if the others disagree. Smaller teams have no say at all, although you have to wonder what their attitudes would be if things were different for them.
So the big teams seem intent on feathering their nests, with the smaller ones stuck on the outside looking in and two of them seemingly heading for oblivion. Meanwhile, Ecclestone remains F1’s ringmaster even at the age of 84 while the FIA sits on its hands.
Where does F1 go from here?
If revenues aren’t being re-invested then the sport itself could somehow buy back the rights (now valued as high as $12 billion but leased to Ecclestone by the FIA in 2001 in a 100-year deal worth just $360 million). But that’s surely too big an ask now; teams and manufacturers have had the chance before and didn’t take it.
The cut teams do take could be split more equitably but, again, that would need agreement from the bigger teams, who rejected the budget cap idea summarily because they don’t think it’s enforceable. But salary caps are enforceable in other sports; are the books of F1 teams and their wider businesses really that much more complicated?
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In a nutshell, it’s the same old story: about how business and entertainment shove the actual sport to one side. But if the sport loses its intrinsic appeal then, ultimately, no-one’s a winner. As such, the situation needs some give from those who, as we know, find that difficult.
Doubtless F1 will adapt and survive as it always has but if that means three-car teams or customer cars as anything other than a short-term measure then it doesn’t bode well. Just look at what IndyCar racing has become.
When they were last on the grid, it was for the right reasons: as part of a less rigidly professional yet more charming sport in which money wasn’t necessarily the be-all and the underdog would have his day.
But if it happens again it would be for the wrong reasons and serve as the best proof yet that F1 is heading down the wrong track.
I’ll note that today’s F2 cars are 2 – 3 seconds a lap slower and IMSA races multiple classes on the same track simultaneously all the time. On the other hand IMSA runs very few races, doesn’t get much TV exposure, and is definitely a third rate series.
But ek you say, that’s a Sky News report and aren’t they owned by Murdoch?
You mean Rupert Murdoch who can buy and sell Bernie Ecclestone 6 times before Tuesday? You mean Sky One that has the largest television deal for Formula One broadcast rights? Precisely.
Bernie is playing a dangerous game here and Formula One could disappear much faster than you think.
This is big news. Bigger than all the silly season stuff I had prepared, bigger than the Drivers Championship. I don’t use ‘Breaking’ except ironically, but this went down last night and blew the rest of it out the window.
I might fill in later, we’ll see about that after the race.
Oh, the Race.
Autódromo José Carlos Pace is about the shortest track there is. They just resufaced and if it rains (which it does constantly) it will be a skating rink. On offer are Mediums and Softs. Mercedes and Williams (Mercedes) hold the first 2 rows, McLaren (Mercedes) and Red Bull (Renault) split the 3rd and the first Ferrari (Alonso, the brick racer, who else) shows up in 8th.
Pretty tables when I get to them.
On this day in 1872, fire rips through Boston. 
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