The manufacturers' exodus from F1

[mx_tifoso]

A quote by Jeremy Burgess about the situation in MotoGP was eerily similar to F1. He said something along the lines of "Yamaha and Suzuki are in the business of selling motorcycles, they only race when they can afford it." Success, or the lack of it, did have a lot to do with it for the manufacturers in F1 though. Extremely high costs coupled with poor road car sales and mediocre results only spelled one thing; quit. Nothing new I suppose.

[ESPImperium]

Honda left for cost reasons, they didnt want to spend $440m on a team that would have won the drivers and constructors title, whilst asking employees to do a 3/4 day week or taking a 3 month unpaid leave period.

BMW left as they didnt have the instant success they craved, and they wanted to spend the $270m a year on their GT2/GT3 and DTM entries. Also sell what they race effectivly.

Toyota left to try and patch up their image as they didnt want to spend $200m on a F1 team whilst having publisised recalls of cars and laying staff off staff in some areas.

Renault have left the constructors area, but not F1 as of the reprocussions of the Crashgate scandal and they fact they also wanted to save $200m a year in F1, even though they are still spending $75m a season. The name is still on the Team they once owned as that team dont want to miss out on the historical payments each year they would miss out on with a chassis name change, this figure is arround $25m to $40m dependant on previous years placings.

Subary left WRC for cost considerations, Kawasaki left MotoGP for cost as well.

The proimary reasons for manufacturers leaving is cost and or immage.

[marcush.]

call it return or whatever ,if you have to stand up in front of the beancounters and tell them you need another 200millions and no real countable success or return you´d be in a better position when the purse is well filled and the one you are asking has no knife at his throat...the decisionmakers at least some of them like the glamour and when you earn 5or 10mill per year spending the odd 200mill for f1 quickly becomes affordable and not much to bother about.It´s politics or feeding the horse ,call it how you want and nothing else that keeps companies in F1 or makes them leave.Or do you honestly think Zetsche is the sportsman who wants to compete with anyone and show Mercedes expertise?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Marcush

Mercedes are in F1 because the team is self sustainable in real world terms. By that I mean they no longer give McLaren 80 million per season, and can do ther own venture and reap their own rewards from it.
BMW did a similar thing but there is a vast difference in the timing/Personnel and team culture.

BMW were prepared to spend, Mercedes are not. BMW were in the middle of the most expensive phase in F1 history, Mercedes are not.

In the end the choice for Mercedes was very simple. Continue supporting a future production car rival and prop them up to the tune of 80 million a season to do so. Or purchase a team with a proven manager and a double trophy season in the bag.
By the time the rumours were circulating (August 2009) Teams had a greed a draft to reduce costs year on year up to a specified limit.
This in itself made the propostion attractive to Mercedes as they could run the team for cheaper than they actually sponsored Mclaren for.

I dont have pronounced figures but their budget is around the 100 million mark and Petronas alone brings in 20million a year along with 12 million in various other sponsorships. I dont have figures for Allianz or Deutsche post, but they arent headline sponsors...so it cant be much of a difference. Then the FIA props them up with the TV cash(who knows what this is) and Mercedes will top up the rest.

Its certainly very different from BMW and Toyota and even Honda. If Mercedes win a race in the next 2 seasons I think the investment will have been more than worth it.
But a poster touched on the real reason.

Results would be fantastic, but just having a fairly high profile on TV justifies the team being there...winning or not. And the car was not dicing with Virgins or HRT's so it was no disaster.
F1 still needs to change before we get full blown manufacturer participation. Engines going turbo is a start, as this is where most want to go with prodution cars.
Lessening reliance on Aero is another avenue needed to be explored for F1 to attract the big fish...28 cars grids would be fantastic, with a mixture of garagistas and big fish, neither holding sway over the other....

[Dragonfly]

I think the reason for leaving is that F1 seized to be a technological showcase for their achievements, especially regarding the engines. Nowadays they are practically running one engine with different badges. They may even have the technology to build superior engines within the general frame of the rules but "freezing" the engines deprived them of this while I suppose their investments in technology follow more global guidelines thus making the production of a spec F1 engine unattractive and cost unjustified.