Tag: Formula One

Softs and Super Softs ok?

First of all you have to recognize that very little of what matters in Formula One right now is happening on the track.  While I’d be gratified by a Hamilton win if only because I think he’s the best passer in the sport currently and Rosberg is basically a cut throat asshole who has no respect for his team or his team mates, I don’t really care if he finishes 2nd (clinching a win for his 2nd Drivers’ Championship) or not.

Nope, as always the big story is the money.

CVC, the private equity group (think Bain Capital) that along with Bernie Ecclestone (who’d be the biggest sleazebag in sports except the competition is so fierce) who organized them, own a controlling interest in Formula One and have been looking to cash out by either floating an IPO or finding a bigger sucker for at least 2 years now.  What’s been holding them back is the barely disguised corruption that permeates it, from the sweetheart deals with some tracks and the extortion of others, to the flagrant bribery of the Big 5 (Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, and Williams) 3 of whom (Ferrari, Red Bull, and McLaren) get the majority with Mercedes and Williams coasting on their “historic contributions” despite Ferrari, McLaren, and Williams having fielded inferior cars for nearly a decade, also conveniently packing the “Strategy Group” that is supposed to represent all the teams, to the ‘no bid’ contracts for well known companies like Pirelli (tires) and lesser known ones like McLaren (who provide all the engine control electronics), to the sponsorships bribes and kickbacks Drivers are routinely expected to provide their teams, to the fact that Ecclestone bribed a Banker to undervalue the shares held by a media company so that CVC could pick them up at a discount when the Banker’s Bank conveniently called the note they were collateral for.

Formula One is a House of Cards floating in a cesspit and the smart money is looking to get out while the getting is good.

So what’s really interesting is seeing which way they fall.

Take engines for instance- there are only 3 suppliers at the moment.  Mercedes rule, Renault drools, and Ferrari is an underpowered joke and has been for years.  The only reason for the Williams resurgence is that they inked a deal to use the tri-star.  McLaren will be debuting the new Honda which may or may not be a gamble, they hired away Alonso who made even the Scuderia’s bricks seem racy as insurance and they’d be fools to dump Button (who’s not quite as good at what Alonso does as Alonso is, but is better than most) in favor of Magnussen who has shown their hardware as the crap it inherently is.  Even Renault doesn’t think that new rules (which Bernie likes because… underpants) will be beneficial.  Ferrari of course longs to dust off a few of their old, good designs but the bottom line is that engines have gone from £5m to £25m and  changing the rules will simply result in another round of development costs that the Littles (Lotus, Force India, Sauber) can’t afford.

Here’s what they spend now- Ferrari and Red Bull around £250m (Red Bull also kicks in about £120m for Toro Rossa); Mercedes and McLaren around £200m; Lotus, Williams, Sauber, and Force India between £100m-£140m.  Marussia struggled along on £70m while Caterham (which will race this weekend because of a crowd-sourcing campaign Bernie likened to begging) has just fired everybody after 7 weeks with no pay so they can at least collect unemployment.

If the Littles leave, which they’re likely to do if all they can afford is “Customer Cars” built by the Big 5, Bernie is left with a field of a dozen.  Red Bull and Ferrari have indicated they’re willing to add a car which would make it 14.  Add Haas Racing (likely in a purchased chassis) and you have 16, but not until ’16 and while the threshold at Yas Marina is exactly that before contract default most tracks have a 14 car minimum so Bernie is just scraping by.

Hardly conductive to that big cash buyout he and CVC are anticipating.

So Bernie has back-tracked on the rhetoric a bit and in negotiations that have been happening this week the Littles have seen at least some encouraging signs.

Me?  I think he’s stringing them along.

Michael Schumacher is paralysed with memory and speech problems, Jules Bianchi is off a respirator and breathing on his own.  Romain Grosjean has signed again with Lotus, Perez will be staying with Force India.

Red Bull is starting from the back of the grid once again because of a non-compliant front wing.  Grosjean has a 20 grid penalty for engine replacement but will start 18 with a stop & go to serve.

If you’re totally into the horse race the groupings are these-

• 1 & 2, Hamilton and Rosberg
• 4 – 6 Vettel, Alonso, and Bottas
• 7 – 9 Button, Massa, and Hulkenberg with an outside shot.

In Constructors 3 & 4 potentially Williams and Ferrari could change.

We start racing again March 15th, just in time to totally deprive me of sleep during the NCAA Basketball Tournament, in Australia.  Mercedes will have 4 engines, Renault 3 (if Caterham survives), Ferrari 2, and Honda 1.

• Yas Marina
• Yas Marina Interactive

Pretty tables below.

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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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?

…

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.

There are two big stories this weekend, actually they’re kind of interelated and the biggest one has 2 parts.

First of all there is pretty much general agreement that Bernie Ecclestone is a greedy asshole who’s been sucking the money out of the sport for years and bribing his favorite teams- Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, and McLaren with pitiful (considering the magnitude of his theft) kickbacks to to sabotage the council of team organizations (in whatever form that’s taken) and back him in votes of the Formula One Board and the FIA.

This year has been particularly tough for the littles who’ve had to totally redesign their chassis, braking system, and electronics to work with the new powerplants that are (with the exception of Mercedes, and not always them either) anemic and unreliable.  I’ll talk more about the engines later.

Marussia of Bianchi misfortune and Caterham, the littlest of the littles, are in receivership administered by Formula One and will not race in Austin or at Interlagos and whether they will make an appearance in Abu Dhabi is questionable.  La, la, la, la, la, says Bernie, everything is fine, very unfortunate but nothing to see here.

Then, during the practice sessions came rumors of a boycott by all the littles- Lotus, Force India, and Sauber.  The concept was they’d all race a lap to satisfy their contractual obligations and avoid fines, and then park with “mechanical difficulties”.  “Forget all that crap. I promise you they will be racing. They will be racing, I give you an absolute guarantee.”

La, la, la, la, la.

Of course Lotus and the rest of the teams are denying anything was discussed at all.

Or was it?

Force India deputy principal Bob Fernley suggested there was an agenda at play, however, and said more teams risked folding unless something was done.

“Two teams have now gone and I think the commercial rights holder is comfortable to thinking there might be 14 cars next year. How many do they want to lose?,” he told Reuters.

“He (commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone) thinks there could be 14 cars next year. So the question is, if we are driving teams out of the business to what agenda is it? And what’s the game?”

The Times quoted Ecclestone as saying there was a risk of two more teams falling by the wayside.

“If we lose another two teams that is what will happen,” he said. “We need (them) if they are going to be there performing properly and not moving around with begging buckets.”

Fernley spoke after a news conference that went on for nearly an hour and that also spoke volumes about the crisis engulfing the sport.

The Sauber, Lotus and Force India bosses all sat on the back row while in front of them, emphasizing the division in the paddock, sat McLaren’s Racing Director Eric Boullier and Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff.

The calls of the back row for a revision of how the revenues were divided, in a sport with turnover in excess of $1.5 billion a year but where the big teams get far more than the less successful ones, seemed to fall largely on deaf ears.

Of course, if Bernie shows up with less than 16 cars in Abu Dhabi he’ll be in contract violation and there are steep financial penalties.

Bernie Ecclestone admits F1 is in deep crisis and needs help

Paul Weaver, The Guardian

Saturday 1 November 2014 19.56 EDT

Bernie Ecclestone has admitted that Formula One is in crisis and he does not know how to fix it. “We should tear all of the current contracts up,” he said. “Tear them all up and start again.”

Ecclestone, looking every one of his 84 years, also conceded that the three teams who were said to be considering a boycott of Sunday’s United States Grand Prix – Force India, Sauber and Lotus – may not be racing next year. But he also insisted that he had averted the immediate threat of a boycott.

Ecclestone, F1’s supremo, said: “We have to decide the best way to sort this whole thing out. Frankly, I know what’s wrong but don’t know how to fix it. No one is prepared to do anything about it because they can’t. The regulations have tied us up. The trouble with lots of regulations and lots of contracts is that we don’t think long-term.”

He admitted that he had been at fault. “The problem is there is too much money probably being distributed badly – probably my fault. But like lots of agreements people make, they seemed a good idea at the time. Why not just bypass team bosses and go to heads of board? I think it’s probably what will have to happen.”

…

However, hours after Ecclestone had spoken the teams involved in the dispute were still discussing whether or not to withdraw from the race.

“We have to open the eyes of those people in a position to turn the lights on and off,” Ecclestone said. “I wouldn’t want to be in a position where I was too strong and Formula One disappears and someone says it is because of you it disappeared.”

The Lotus owner, Gérard Lopez, said: “The distribution model of revenues is completely wrong. When you get teams that receive more money just for showing up than teams spend in a whole season then something is entirely wrong with the whole system, and so that cannot be allowed to happen.”

Sauber’s principal, Monisha Kaltenborn, said: “If we don’t act now together then you have to ask yourself what else needs to still happen? You look simply at the facts: we are sport here, in my view still one of the best global sporting platforms, we have turnovers of billions of dollars and the sport as such, together with the stakeholders, are not in a position to actually maintain 11 teams.”

Ecclestone had discussions with Kaltenborn in the afternoon in an attempt to get the smaller teams to race. He said: “I’m not happy. And we’ll have to do something about it. I think the situation is such that if enough people want it resolved, we can resolve it.” But he dismissed the idea of teams running three cars. “Forget third cars. Nobody can afford two cars,” he said.

Now remember what I said about related developments and how we’d get back to the crappy engine story?  A big problem this year has been all the money that’s had to be put into completely new cars because of the engine change and only one of the 3 engines available (Mercedes, Renault, Ferarri) is worth a damn.  Ferrari is slow and Renault breaks down all the time.

There are 3 drivers who are going to get penalized for unauthorized drive train replacements- Button and Kvyat who are getting dinged a 5 Grid penalty for replacement gearboxes, but the big name is Vettel who replaced everything and as a consequence is starting from the pit.  In a “controverisial” decision (controversial because it makes Bernie look bad and disappoints the customers), Vettel stayed out in Qualifying just long enough to lay down a lap that that avoided the 107% non-competitive cut rule.  Makes perfect sense to me, if you’re not going to start any higher than last anyway why bother?  Even Hamilton and Rosberg have had gearbox and braking problems (braking is integrated into the KERS and the electronic engine controls so it’s not a seperate system anymore).

On offer are the Mediums and Softs.  It’s theoretically possible I suppose that some will attempt a 1 Pit strategy (vettel for instance) but I expect most will go 2 Pits, Soft, Medium, Soft.

Hamilton is unhappy about double points in Abu Dhabi and leading the Driver’s Championship by only 17 you can understand why.  Rosberg leads the front row, but it’s notable that Williams has locked down the second.  That puts Massa infront of Alonso for the first time in a long time with Red Bull Ricciardo spliting the third row with Alonso.

• Circuit of the Americas
• Interactive Track

Pretty tables below.

There are 4 big stories heading into today’s race, Bianchi’s accident, Vettel leaving Red Bull and being replaced by Kvyat, Alonso leaving the Scuderia to be replaced by Vettel, and Lotus/Renault dumping Renault power in favor of Mercedes.

In it’s simplest form, Suzuka was a predictable mess.  Formula One cars are good, but they are not boats meant to be driven around in typhoons and all the weather forecasts agreed that at the scheduled race time it was going to be coming down in buckets.  It was race promoters, not the FIA, that insisted on keeping the original start despite the FIA’s greater investment in the global audience.

As a result the bulk of the race took place behind the safety car, nothing much changed from qualifying, and at the end when they started racing a bit during one of the lighter downpours there was a rash of accidents one of which sent Jules Bianchi sliding underneath a crane removing another wreck.  He suffered generalized brain trauma with the neurons literally ripped apart and whether he survives or not he will certainly never drive again.

Automobile racing is inherently dangerous.  For all the hand wringing, lamentations, and proposals for new regulations, Formula One has an exceptional safety record, especially compared with Turn Left Bumper Cars.  I hope Bianchi has a complete and speedy recovery and that any reforms don’t ruin the sport.

The Vettel and Alonso stories are intertwined.  If you ever needed proof that Vettel is unbelievably stupid and arrogant you have it now.  He’s never shown the slightest bit of talent for anything except taking the most superior car on the track and qualifying well enough to get out in front and drive away in clean air.  Faced with the slightest deviation from this scenario he’s a massive failure.

So, after a mere season of disappointment, he petulantly decides to abandon the team that has nurtured him and made him look much better than he really is since he was a mere go-carting teen.

And for what?  He moves from a car that is arguably the 3rd fastest (except Ricciardo makes him look bad by beating him with the same equipment) to a team with a rabid swooning fan base that doesn’t care that for at least 5 or 6 years they’ve been putting bricks with square tires out there.

Priorities.

And what of Alonso?  You know, I hate him, but even I have to admit the man is a genius driver who can take a brick with square tires and make it look like a racer.  Scuderia Marlboro are a bunch of clueless dopes with inferior chassis and power plants and that’s unlikely to change in the near future as the suits from Fiat boot the last of Enzo’s F1 boys.  Fitting that Vettel should spend the rest of his career in hopeless purgatory spiraling the drain.

But Alonso has a problem now too.  There are not many competitive seats out there and while he’d be an ideal replacement for Rosberg (who’s good, but not great), Rosberg has a year left on his contract.  Kvyat has already grabbed the second seat at Red Bull behind Ricciardo (better than Vettel, but who isn’t?) and then…?

Williams is doing better, but that’s not saying much.  McLaren is coasting on the fumes of past greatness which are in shorter supply for them than the Scuderia.  Toro Rossa is looking racy at the end of the season, but they’re saddled with that crappy Ferrari engine, which leaves…?

Lotus?  Used to be called Benneton, then Renualt, then Lotus/Renault, and now they’ve done a deal with Mercedes for their clearly superior power plant.  As noted Alonso has a talent for making cars race better than they should so it might be a good fit.

I’d rather he not have to sit out a year since he might just be the best driver out there (besides Hamilton of course).

Mediums and Softs.  1.5 seconds per lap Delta.  Mediums will last forever but take several laps to warm up.

Singapore under the lights which means I have to get up at the relatively sane hour of 7:30 am.

Relative to what?  Have you met my relatives?

At least they’re not as crazy as Uncle Bernie who was all for banning radio between the pit and the drivers until he was all for it again.  Personally I think it a particularly daft bit of madness because as Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost says, “The changes are absolutely not necessary. For us of course it’s a big disadvantage because the more inexperienced the driver is, there’s more information you have to give him.”  

Pat Symonds, chief technical officer for Williams, added: “The whole thing has been handled hastily. It’s a team sport. I don’t see any difference between an engineer advising a driver how to drive and a caddie helping a golfer choose an iron. Golf is not a team sport but that is perfectly permissible. Racing is a team sport. Should drivers get out and change the tyres during a pitstop?”

He added: “We want personalities in the sport and if the personalities are engineers and not just drivers what’s wrong with that? I think the banter between the engineer and a driver is a good thing.”

As for the FIA, the race director, Charlie Whiting, admits there will be problems policing coded radio messages. He said: “I agree it won’t be straightforward.” Chaos and confusion vie for pole in Singapore.

And then there’s the issue of new, unreliable, and complicated engines and energy recovery systems and batteries which don’t just drive the car forward but also assist in braking and substantially effect fuel consumption.

In short I think it’s entirely contrary to my position which is that the struggling teams need more practice and development time to perfect their cars and train their drivers than the teams that are oozing with money, not less.  It’s a false economy.

Oh not to worry says crazy Uncle Bernie, we’ll just have less teams and give them more cars on the track because that’s what the people want to see- Mercedes or Red Bull or Ferrari all driving away in a pack from everyone else and grabbing first, second, AND third except for those that get purposely bashed out of the race by their team mates and heaven forfend that an engineer someplace reminds them that this hardware is expensive and all comes out of the same wallet.

Sure, that will help.

In other “big” news the suits at Fiat have finally won and the last Formula One program trained executive at Scuderia Marlboro has been shoved to the curb and replaced by a pencil pushing accountant, not that he had a record of anything except failure but that belongs to the Team as a whole and will not be improved by the replacement of a single individual.

The Marina Bay street circuit is the second slowest track after Monaco and due to the number of turns (23), heat and humidity (even at night), and counter-clockwise layout is one of the most demanding despite being the shortest and having 2 DRS zones.  Tire strategy is going to make a huge difference, on offer are Softs and Super-Softs.  The Super-Softs are 2 to 2.5 seconds faster per lap but will only last between 13 and 14 laps before they start to go off.  In a 61 lap race that might mean frequent changes, but you also have to factor in the mandatory two compound rule and the fact they only have 3 sets total and most Teams have used 1 or 2 sets in Qualifying.

• Singapore Grand Prix
• Marina Bay
• Interactive Track

Pretty tables below.

Now I’m not going to try and blame all of Formula One’s problems on the undisputed fact that Nico Rosberg booted his ‘team mate’ Lewis Hamilton out of the race at Spa-Forchamps two weeks ago and will skate without any meaningful sanction at all, nor do I think the problem is merely ugly new circuits, ugly cars, no engine sound, or blatant nepotism, or even boring, slow, heavy cars.

Nope, the problem is money, but not the way you think.

The problem with any professional sporting franchise is that team owners pretend to think of it as a business, like selling groceries, instead of what it really is which is a gigantic penis you can masturbate in public.

First the power relationship is not at all like marketing directly.  The League you play in has every bit of it, otherwise you’re the Harlem Globetrotters inventing your opposition and playing High School Gyms against cops, firefighters, and politicians in wheelchairs (you want some public embarrassment?  Even the bad teams practice once a week and they use those chairs all day every.  Besides, they give you the crappy ones with the hinky wheels.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  The fact I can’t hit an undefended layup standing on my own 2 feet has nothing to do with it).

The League always makes money, usually most of it, because their overhead is low and all they provide you with are rules, structure, and branding.  If you want to see libertarian Calvinball I suggest America’s Cup where everything is negotiated between the franchise owners except the wind and the water and they’re trying like heck to remove the water.

Anyway, if you want to watch Basketball you, the sports consumer, have certain expectations about what you are about to witness.  There is a ball.  It is round.  Players can touch it with their hands.  Occasionally they bounce it on the floor or throw it to another player.  There is a horizontal hoopie thing that serves as a point scoring goal.  I choose Basketball as my example because it was invented in the U.S., is familiar to most readers, and clearly and historically artificial in construction (a designed game), but the principles apply universally.  This is the ‘structure’.  If the hoopie thing were oriented vertically and the game played with your hips and the (usually) non-bouncy severed heads of your defeated enemies it would be Aztec-ball.

So ‘structure’ is what separates sports from each other and ‘branding’ is what fills the seats.  ‘Rules’ are about subtleties and competition.

You might argue that all non-running racing is ‘structurally’ the same.  You have a vehicle (bike, camel, doesn’t matter) and you win by either traveling the farthest or by crossing an arbitrary distance (could be farthest) in a smaller amount of time.  Yet there is no arguing that Turn Left racing is immensely more popular in the U.S. than camel racing, perhaps because of our Islamophobia or perhaps because of our outrageous taxes on camels (which I would walk a mile for).

And now we are getting closer to the subtleties.  What is the difference between IndyCar and Formula One?  Well, one favors close competition and the other favors speed.  In sports favoring speed the dynamic that develops is that one participant gains an early advantage which simply increases until the race is mercifully cut short.  The only chances for a change in position are reliability problems or management mistakes.  In sports favoring competition artificial and arbitrary rules are introduced to ensure any early advantage is erased.

Most team owners will complain about money when what they mean is that their team is uncompetitive because of management decisions.  Salary caps and other restrictions are put into place to make the Harlem Globetrotters play more like a team of politicians in hinky wheelchairs when the real difference is that they can make an undefended layup and you can’t.

In fact either you make a commitment to winning or you don’t.  Where Formula One has gone wrong is in restricting practice and testing.  Practice develops the pool of drivers, engineers, and mechanics so that supply side economics lowers your labor costs, not kickbacks, nepotism, and bribes.  Testing develops your design by exposing strengths and weaknesses outside of competition where corrections can reduce the impact of flaws and new strategies are suggested by discovery of advantages.

Yup, sure is expensive, but not as expensive as a failed program that is a waste and a joke (looking at you Scuderia Marlboro), simulated onanistic computer time (looking at you again Scuderia Marlboro), and wrongly calibrated high-tech wind tunnels (looking at you a third time Scuderia Marlboro).

At least Ferrari gets it and is agitating for more track time while the also rans are complaining that their cars need to get cheaper, not better, and blaming the drivers for lack of preparation while throwing ever increasing chunks of money at them in a lame attempt to create a box office bonanza out of noteriety and hype.

Autodromo Nazionale Monza is the fastest track in Formula One.  On offer today are the Hard and Medium tires between which there is not much difference.

Ah Formula One, the dismal sport.

How dismal is it Johnny?

Dismal enough that it signals the end of summer and a return to the dreary grind.

Dismal enough that still nobody has solved the problem of Mercedes dominance and we are reduced to talking about stupid things like the rivalry for first place in the Driver’s Championship (Rosberg leads by 11) and the fight for third place in the Constructor’s Championship between Ferrari and Williams.

Dismal enough that we are once again reminded that you have to bribe your way into a seat in an F1 cockpit but provided you have the nepotistic credentials and the money anyone at all can get a ride even if you’re too young to drink or have a driver’s license for a regular road.

It’s remarkably egalitarian that way.

As dismal as the weather at Spa where they say if it’s not raining it’s getting ready to rain.  At 4.35 miles per lap it’s the longest and one of the fastest tracks of the season.  On offer will be Mediums and Softs.  Because of the speed there will be added wear on the brakes where Hamilton has already had some problems.

Of course the big news is that Hamilton burnt up a car in qualifying and by burnt up I mean chassis (carbon fiber), engine, and gearbox.

The chassis would be ok, but the engine and gearbox have him starting from pit lane along with Maldonado and Magnussen.

Now they’re blaming it on a fuel leak which is no doubt correct, but the inherent problem with this year’s cars is the extensive electronics in the energy recovery system and the breaking force added by the kinetic drive that powers it have the engineering teams scrambling to produce a power plant that is fast and reliable.  Mercedes has done the best job so far which is why they’re in the lead.

As for Hamilton it remains to be seen is he can produce a comeback like he did last week when he drove himself into a third place.  The Hungaroring has limited passing opportunities, though starting from pit lane Hamilton will have his choice of Mediums and Softs and will likely use that to produce a different pit stop strategy.

At least they didn’t have to worry about dust as it’s been raining, but that also means the track isn’t rubbered in.  The slick track brought out red flags in Q3 as Magnussen bought a wall.

The way things stand now at the August break Hamilton is 14 behind Rosberg, Ricciardo 24 ahead of Vettel and Alonso and Ferrari have survived Nikki Lauda calling the Ferrari a piece of crap which, of course, it is.  Other than that Mercedes is the only team close to producing a good engine and the top half of the field shows that.

Practice saw Susie Wolff have an impressive session at the wheel of a Williams but clearly Mercedes is the class of the field even though Hamilton had a wreck in Qualifying and starts in 20th.  He blames his brakes.

The Hockenheimring is not exactly Rosberg’s home track despite his protestations, but it is in Germany and Mercedes is having a good year which is raising expectations.

In other off track action Maldonado is making an early commitment to Lotus for next season.  Rosberg likewise with Mercedes.  Ecclestone has started his bribery trial in which his defense is- I didn’t give him a bribe so I could take over the company at a discount, I gave him a bribe so I could cheat on my taxes!

Nice guy.

On offer will be Softs and Super Softs.  The Super Soft is about 2 seconds quicker per lap, but is only good for about 10 laps before it starts to show it’s age (today’s race is 67 laps).  Pirelli is predicting a 2 or 3 stop race.  Only Raikkonen, Grosjean, and Hamilton will be starting Softs.

What’s basically preventing Hamilton from starting last (15th in Qualifying and a Gearbox penalty) is that Ericsson must start from pit lane AND serve a Stop and Go because they didn’t seal the car last night.

• Formula One Official Website

• Hockenheimring
• Formula One Interactive Track

Pretty tables below.

Again?

And not even a Woodstock mosh pit mudslide.  Mediums and Hards on display.  Rosberg and Vettel, Hamilton unexpectedly low.  Gutierrez drops 10 places, unsafe release at previous round.  Chilton drops 5, unscheduled gearbox change.  Ericsson, Kobayashi fail to meet 107% requirement, race at stewards’ discretion.

Maldonado qualified 15th, excluded for fuel infringement.  We’ll see if they start 21 or not.

Coverage on CNBC since NBC/Universal refuses to drop Dancin’ Dave and his merry band of Beltway Buttkissers for anything except the most important sporting events.