Fiorano Circuit and Ferrari

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Er, heard of the Premiership Rugby, NBA, Top 14, Super League, NRL et al salary caps? [-X

Where is the cap on spending money on the team?

Drivers salries are not the agenda. Team budgets are, and Premiership Rugby, NBA, Super league et al are still dominated by the big spenders.

If you are putting balls in baskets you obviously spend your big money on the men who can do that best. If you try to finish a motor race in the shortest possible time you put your main money into making the fastest car. If money distorts the sport in basketball they need to limit salaries, if money distorts and kills the sport in motor racing the resources for making a car fast need to be limited.

So thereby handing power to those with smaller budgets? Even when its equal, it will favour small teams.
The moment a set budget cap comes into F1, it will die a slow death.
We will see the rise of a Group C style championship, with car tech applicable in family cars. where the big guns can go at each others throats, with as much money as they want or need to compete.

Otherwise, dont come to the race!

[ISLAMATRON]

Teams respond to Ferrari's(and Mercs) cheating

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/85279

Hey look at that... the teams made the rule... when does that ever happen?, other than everyday

Glad to see that whitmarsh tookthe high road instead of coppying Ferrari in their cheating ways.

The irony of your post will not be lost on intelligent readers of this site.

last year he was arguing DDDs were clever engineering and that there was no such thing as "spirit of the rules". Now when Ferrari and Merc did something that is not against the written rules, suddenly the "spirit of the rules" goes the other way.....

I never argued either way about DDD's... I dont care about the aero do dads either way, they never really interest me all that much...

my point is that Luca & Co whooped and cried about the DDD and even went to court about it claiming it was "outside the spirit of the rules" but yet they take every chance to circumvent the "spirit of the rules" themselves, most recently testing new parts during what was supposed be a promo event, and now that "loophole" will be closed by the people who make the rules, the teams themselves, the same people(TWG) which wrote the rules allowing the loophole for the DDD

but I'm sure somebody will blame the FIA instead of FOTA or Ferrari

[Dukeage]

Er, heard of the Premiership Rugby, NBA, Top 14, Super League, NRL et al salary caps? [-X

Where is the cap on spending money on the team?

The salary cap. There is very little else that a ball sport team can actually spend the money on that performs on-pitch performance. Building a nice new stadium (note that many Premier Rugby teams just rent them out from football teams) won't directly make your team win lineouts or get those shots from downtown. That's why they don't need to be capped.

Drivers salries are not the agenda.

They would have been exempted from the proposed budget cap, but they are not the majority of team spending like they are in ball sports. In motor racing the spending is on the car development.

Team budgets are, and Premiership Rugby, NBA, Super league et al are still dominated by the big spenders.

Those leagues are certainly closer though. Let's compare Premier Rugby with the football equivalent. Both have promotion and relegation, Premier Rugby a salary cap, the football one doesn't. The Premier League has had only six different clubs finish in the top four since 2004-2005, with three teams (Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United) having finished in the top four every time, and a fourth (Liverpool) doing all apart from twice. The other two only appeared in the top four once (Spurs and Everton in 04-05). In Premier Rugby, nine teams have finished in the top four in that period. Only one team (the Leicester Tigers) have finished in the top four all of those years. Only two of them only reached the top four once (Bristol and Harlequins).

I don't like the thought of the Max Mosley proposed budget cap (especially the two tier element), but the Resource Restriction Agreement appears to be OK.

it is not quite the same. Do they have salary cap per player or total salary caps?

AFAIK per team.

Ok maybe I exagerated slightly, but it is a fact that ALL teams tested like mad.

Red Bull bought the A1 Ring to turn it into a testing facility right before the ridiculous in-season testing ban started. Why's no one bashing Red Bull for aiming to do a Ferrari?

I think they bought it for events as opposed to testing, they certainly wanted (or still want, I think the latter once they've rebuilt it) DTM races there.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

[
The salary cap. There is very little else that a ball sport team can actually spend the money on that performs on-pitch performance. Building a nice new stadium (note that many Premier Rugby teams just rent them out from football teams) won't directly make your team win lineouts or get those shots from downtown. That's why they don't need to be capped.

That does not stop a great team buying a 100million dollar game breaking player.
He will go there cos he knows he will win trophies.
This is still the case! Leicester and Bath in Rugby? LA Lakers in the NBA?
How many players have they bought for balooned sums? LOADS.
It changes nothing.

Salary caps are the exact anti thesis of competition.

The only thing I would say that actually works is a the american draft system.
But how do you implement that into F1? Not easily is the quick answer!

[CZOLG]

There is a thing people semm to either forget or not mention here.
The Fiorano track on which Ferrari used to test wasn't a "gift". Over the years the tem has built an infrastructure to ensure being competitive and also staff/resources around the fact that they got themselves a track.
You may argue but now it has been taken away from them. Small teams can bitch and moan all they like but Ferrari worked hard for the resources it has got now. Shame they can't use them anymore.

[WhiteBlue]

If you follow Ferrari's logic of unimpeded Darwinism in F1 you logically end up with Ferraris only on the grid. IMO the fun already stops where you have satellite teams who are supporting their engine supplier and help them fight their opposition by becoming moving chicanes.

The best solution is to scale down resources to a point where they were prior to the last big manufacturer entry in 1995. That is actually what is being done now and it will work. Surely if you make an omlette you have to brake some eggs but in the end the omelette counts and not the shells.

[vall]

If you follow Ferrari's logic of unimpeded Darwinism in F1 you logically end up with Ferraris only on the grid. IMO the fun already stops where you have satellite teams who are supporting their engine supplier and help them fight their opposition by becoming moving chicanes.

The best solution is to scale down resources to a point where they were prior to the last big manufacturer entry in 1995. That is actually what is being done now and it will work. Surely if you make an omlette you have to brake some eggs but in the end the omelette counts and not the shells.

these days you cannot run a competitive team in a high-tech sport as F1 with a budget of some miserable 50MEuro/year. Period.

[Dukeage]

What people need to realize is that there needs to be at least ten teams in F1. You can't have a series based on Ferrari and McLaren. It's a stark choice between a F1 with sensible costs, or no F1. In the words of the Meerkat in the car insurance commercials, simples. I also doubt that any competitive team is spending €50M, any estimates on Sauber's budget for 2010?

[WhiteBlue]

How about €100 mil which would be more realistic for what they try to do right now?

The point is the budgets were in excess of €300 mil in 2006.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

What people need to realize is that there needs to be at least ten teams in F1. You can't have a series based on Ferrari and McLaren. It's a stark choice between a F1 with sensible costs, or no F1. In the words of the Meerkat in the car insurance commercials, simples. I also doubt that any competitive team is spending €50M, any estimates on Sauber's budget for 2010?

And currently there are 12 teams.

By stopping a team spending 160 million +, what you are doing is
1. giving accountants EVEN more money.
2. giving rise to the "super accountant"
3. meaning teams with the most creative accountants will win.

You cannot tell me that Mercedes or Ferrari cannot sink 50 million a year into a "black" project running parrallel to F1, that would benefit the team with its findings, and get caught. They can keep it quiet easily.
They dont have to disclose anything to the FIA as Daimler and Fiat dont need to answer to them.

What you are doing is opening up a very big can of worms.

[Midnight-34]

The budgetcup in a way are good because they prevent a team to dominate over the other but on the other way limiting everything is not the way to save the sport

I was watching a 2001 race yesterday and even if at the time a lots of people were complaing about the lack of show, the race were realy good. Driver pushing to the limit, many mistakes, many overtakes, contacts and exploding engine
everything was push to the limit, now is all about preserv, preserve the tires, preserv the engine, preserv gearbox, don't folow too close the other cars etc..

We should go back to the unlimited number of engine and make "not's so good tires" that dont last for 60 laps
Then the return of in season testing could instead prevent a car to dominate over the other because it has a triky solution that other teams can't copy, the test should allow to close the gap between the teams ( not all... but maybe just the title contenders)

And image a F1 with a lot of areas where the desingers creativity is the only limit
TC, ESP, ABS and a lot of other tecnology went from F1 into the road cars, with this restricted rules it will be hard to see something like that in the future

[raceman]

You are wrong, extremely wrong. First of all blown diffuser is not banned for next year, but the DDD is

And you are neither right!

If the DDD is banned for the next year, how will you blow it with a straight diffuser without any deck on it to blow?? [-X Contradicting to yourself..... :^o

[speedsense]

You are wrong, extremely wrong. First of all blown diffuser is not banned for next year, but the DDD is

And you are neither right!

If the DDD is banned for the next year, how will you blow it with a straight diffuser without any deck on it to blow?? [-X Contradicting to yourself..... :^o

The original blown diffusers where single deck, though blown inside. Blowing a single deck diffuser on the outside, will still work better than not blowing it, they still want to create higher energy vortices....IMHO

[donskar]

WB wrote:

If you follow Ferrari's logic of unimpeded Darwinism in F1 you logically end up with Ferraris only on the grid. IMO the fun already stops where you have satellite teams who are supporting their engine supplier and help them fight their opposition by becoming moving chicanes.

Shame on you, WB. This is silly and you know it.

[donskar]

There is a thing people semm to either forget or not mention here.
The Fiorano track on which Ferrari used to test wasn't a "gift". Over the years the tem has built an infrastructure to ensure being competitive and also staff/resources around the fact that they got themselves a track.
You may argue but now it has been taken away from them. Small teams can bitch and moan all they like but Ferrari worked hard for the resources it has got now. Shame they can't use them anymore.

An excellent point. Let us not forget that Ferrari (and McL, and others) earned the resources they are no longer allowed to use. Fiorano and Mugello were not bought to test passenger cars. Silent test tracks and empty wind tunnels do not speak of cost savings. And, before you start bleating, those resources can NOT be FULLY utilized in other ways.

Let me ask some of our members to answer a question I have asked in the past: Assume an F1 spending cap of 75 million units (whatever currency you wish). Next assume that McL, because of their hard-earned success, raise 100 million units of advertsing. Are they NOT allowed to spend it?