Much as I hate to say it, but Max Mosley was right all those years ago when he said you can’t depend on the major car manufacturers when it comes to the long haul in F1.
Toyota’s decision to quit after a lamentable record of under-achievement comes as absolutely no surprise to me at all, although I must say that I will remember the team fondly for having introduced Kamui Kobayashi into F1 as the very best Japanese driver I have ever seen.
Toyota’s departure will at least clear the way for Sauber to re-enter F1 as an independent team next season, but I fancy the Japanese car maker’s board may find itself fielding a legal action from both the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula One Management organisation.
Having signed the new Concorde Agreement earlier this year, Toyota was technically committed to competing in the FIA world championship until the end of 2012. So how will all that be sorted out?
Worrying times for F1, I fancy. Granted the cost cutting initiatives have tempted some new lower-budget teams to throw their hats into the ring next season, and very welcome they will be.
But I can’t help looking a little nervously in the direction of the Renault squad which has been a touch threadbare, results-wise, this season. I hope that the French car maker won’t follow Honda, BMW and Toyota out of the sport, but I’m worried they might.
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re: Car manufacturers can't cut it in F1
Mossley made sure that there are no manufacturers left. Manufacturers were always a part and parcel of F1 as not a single team, other than Ferrari, produced its own engine. There would have been no Formula 1 all those years without them. So Mosley's remarks were (intentionally???) offensive to the manufacturers. The golden eras of Maclaren, Williams, Benetton etc came at the back of a manufacturer works engines. At that time, manufacturers could get value for money as they could push the technological envelope (e.g. Renault with their V10, Honda with V-Tec technology to name a few) and justified the expense of F1 involvement on proper R & D, not on marketing terms. They hoped that by becoming full blown teams, they could expand their reasearch and development into all areas of car engineering. Active suspensions, traction control and clever gearboxes to name but a few came from F1 before Mosley started meddling with the sport and ruined it. Manufacturers were keen to invest, research and develop. Fast forward to 2009. Stanardised engines, development freezing and how un-F1, suggestions to tune BACK the Mercedes engine as it is too good!!! I am so surprised that Mercedes has not pulled out yet! With development work severly curtailed and so many standardised components, including engines, there is little real reasearch and development going on or scope for innovation. So what is left? Marketting/ Promotion. And is that any good? With no US races, European races under threat, and the FIA villifying the manufucturers, no wonder they are leaving in droves. Why pay all those millions? If the manufacturers withdrwaw, then we will end up with a single series championship. All running the same standardised (Cossworth or whever wins the tender next) engines, same standardised tyres (again with tender, no competition, i.e. no development) etc. with Ferrari the only team having its own engine, which they cannot develop to compete with the standardised one. It is a nightmarish scenario for F1, and its happening now, because of the FIA. The eceonomic downturn is just a pretext. If F1 was value for money (in terms of research & development and marketing), not a single manufacturers would have left. A budget of 100 million is not particularly big amount for the manufacturerers. FIA had no qualms slapping it on Maclaren as a fine......
re: Car manufacturers can't cut it in F1
On Bloomberg.com, I've found the following:
"Ferrari Says Formula 1 Rulers to Blame for Exodus of Carmakers
“The reality is that this gradual defection from the F-1 fold has more to do with a war waged against the major car manufacturers by those who managed Formula 1 over the past few years, than the result of any economic crisis,” Ferrari, the sport’s oldest team, said in a statement on its Web site...Comparing the loss of some of the sport’s “major players” to the plot of “Ten Little Indians,” the 1930s crime novel by British writer Agatha Christie, Ferrari said that Formula One’s reality was more serious....“In Christie’s work of fiction, the guilty party was only uncovered when all the other characters died, one after the other,” Ferrari added. “Do we want to wait for this to happen or do we want to pen a different ending to the book on Formula One?”".
re: Car manufacturers can't cut it in F1
Peter Nunn,
Arrows and Footwork were the same team, bought up by Tom Walkinshaw who ran them into bankruptcy, Minardi are now Toro Rosso and going quite well, Ligier became Prost who went the same way as Walkinshaw, Tyrrell sold up to BAR who went on to become Honda and now Brawn and March fizzled out after several years of underperforming.
Just thought I would point that out.