Jean Todt - Fresh air for F1?

[andrew]

So Montezemolo gave up possibly the most important position in the European motor industry to be made a complete fool of as Ferrari declines.
Yea, that makes loadsa sense, not.


So Briatore is not a criminal,
Obviously people who believe this have never bothered to check out his history.
I will not say that such people are either daft or have vested interests but leave it for others to work out for themselves.

Yet again, no facts to back up your claims.

Montezemolo is stepping down as he does not agree with CEO Sergio Marchionne's future strategy for Fiat. Doesn't sound like a sacking does it? Besides he has achieved what he set out to achieve so his job is done.

Briatore has not been convicted in a court of law and the FIA had to recind their verdict as someone (I don't know who ) messed up.

[autogyro]

Nobody messed up, as the criminal Briatore just found out when his penis extension was taken off him by Italian customs and excise.
People who support him and those who have placed commercial interest in this person should be very very careful they do not loose all they have.

[dumrick]

This doesn't even look like me, agreeing with autogyro, but...

Montezemolo is stepping down as he does not agree with CEO Sergio Marchionne's future strategy for Fiat. Doesn't sound like a sacking does it?

Actually, it does. In the corporate world, we see very few top cats being fired. They are usually invited to resign and can choose their own justification...

Briatore has not been convicted in a court of law(...)

That again in a question of scope. According to the easiest source on his bio:

Briatore was sentenced for gambling-motivated fraud, cheating and swindle by fake playing cards [1][3] Briatore was also involved in the bankruptcy of Paramatti, and eventually convicted on various counts of fraud in Bergamo and Milan and sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in prison.[4] To avoid imprisonment, he fled to Saint Thomas,Virgin Islands. He never went to prison and he came back to Italy only thanks to an act of oblivion

So, the man is a criminal. Blaim the italian tradition that says that a criminal with enough money (whatever its source) and the right political connections can get whatever he wants from the system for the fact that he never really was in prison. I wonder if his career launch wasn't due to that other italian tradition, for the big corporations to keep some mafiosos close. They say it's for good luck. Maybe that's the reason behind the hand the Benneton family gave him?

[WhiteBlue]

Perhaps we should go back to the question of Todt's job performance. I understand that it inevitably invites to comparisons with his predecessor but then again we should not argue points of perception and opinion. It would be better to focus on real achievements.

Lets take the issue of competitiveness of small teams. There have always been small teams in F1. In Mosleys time one of the biggest issues for private and small teams was affordable engines because the rich manufacturer teams got the most expensive and competitive engines for free. Ten years ago teams like Sauber were paying 30 mil $ for an engine that was one or two specs down from a Ferrari team engine. Due to Mosley's work Sauber are now getting the same engines and they do get them for less than 5 mil $. It took ten years of work to achieve that and I have yet to see a similar success from Jean Todt in terms of achieving one of the highly political objectives of the FiA.

The next big issue will be promoting hybrid technology and making fuel saving technologies competitive discriminators instead of useless intellectual games such as F1 aerodynamics. To reach this goal aerodynamics must be neutralized, KERS must be made the focus of development and new power train solutions must be agreed. In order to get investment into new and more efficient power trains many more manufacturers are needed in F1 who are prepared to compete for efficiency and not for wasting power. The obvious way to do it is the global racing engine which is already supported by various manufacturers. It remains to be seen what Todt can achieve there.

[Pandamasque]

Can someone please rename this thread to 'Briatore is overrated'? We need more overrated topics.

[barricadas]

Perhaps we should go back to the question of Todt's job performance. I understand that it inevitably invites to comparisons with his predecessor but then again we should not argue points of perception and opinion. It would be better to focus on real achievements.

Thanks WB, that was my intention.

Focusing on Todt's performance, I think we'll have an oportunity to check his independance from Bernie on the Rome circuit issue. Todt and Montezemolo defended Monza hardly yesterday. Let's see if these are new times and Bernie is not free anymore to impose urban circuits without further oposition.