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Ruslan

Under New Management

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Thanks, man. My mind is not what it was once but I seem to remember you were one of the good ones. Bald as a coot, right?

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19 hours ago, maure said:

I do live in Toyota land... but, come on, contrast Honda's first season to Mercedes'. The 2015 performance by Honda was reprehensible. That's not to say I don't wish them well. In fact, a great deal of my disappointment stems from my desire to see them up front.

And, yeah, I know Mercedes bought the trick car made by Brawn but they still finished 4th their first season.

Development of hybrid F1 technology has to be described in its proper context, and we may then most likely discover factors which would soften our judgment of Honda's misfortunes in 2014 and the following years. Next year is new morning for them, and I think they will be fully exonerated. I wish them well.

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No real surprise here. I think a lot of people looking at the "bigger picture" have seen that a budget cap is necessary. Todt concluded it was. Max Mosely, after being intimately involved in screwing up F1, also has decided it is necessary. Now Libery Media has.

The tendency in these forums is that any discussions of budget caps tend to get off-handedly dismissed, and I have yet to see an argument against them that registered with me. But clearly, many people at the top of F1 clearly see the reasons and need for it. So if it happens, in long-run, it will be a good thing. With Liberty in and Eccelstone possibly out, it may well happen. We were going to have a budget cap in 2015 until Bernie arranged to kill it.

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18 minutes ago, Ruslan said:

No real surprise here. I think a lot of people looking at the "bigger picture" have seen that a budget cap is necessary. Todt concluded it was. Max Mosely, after being intimately involved in screwing up F1, also has decided it is necessary. Now Libery Media has.

The tendency in these forums is that any discussions of budget caps tend to get off-handedly dismissed, and I have yet to see an argument against them that registered with me. But clearly, many people at the top of F1 clearly see the reasons and need for it. So if it happens, in long-run, it will be a good thing. With Liberty in and Eccelstone possibly out, it may well happen. We were going to have a budget cap in 2015 until Bernie arranged to kill it.

Below is what I said on the issue. I would like to hear your counter-argument or, if "didn't register", why.

On 12/16/2016 at 1:13 PM, maure said:

It's an old topic.

The problem is not the budgets. Or, rather, the problem becomes the budgets when regulations impose narrow development paths, all of which are costly.

If the regulation were to be relaxed and budget caps eliminated, teams could explore as they pleased and off-the-wall ideas would beat cash. They always do, given a chance. It's called competition.

Don't forget what regulations have explicitly done to F1. Consider, for example, that turbo engines were forbidden for being too dangerous until, from one season to the next, they became mandatory. Not only it is insane. It demonstrates that the regulation was total bullsht.

So, why is F1 stuck on this weird noncompetitive loop? Because F1 is a tv show that brands use for advertising. Controlling regulations and race director means that the big teams can control how expensive and productive their advertising becomes.

Meanwhile, the small teams, the fans, and motor racing in general get screwed.

Looking forward to the season of Supercross starting in a few weeks.

 

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@Ruslan For years I have listed numerous reasons why imposed budget limit is impractical, yet I am yet to hear in return a single refutal from you of formerly stated reasons. It is getting tiring, because there is no discourse on this subject, just some senseless, stubborn dwelling on a proposal of budget, as panacea for sport illnesses, something majority of teams so far were rejecting to the point of threatening leaving the series, if imposed upon them. Strangely, they were rather on my side of the argument, seeing really The Big Picture, in contrast to people who are advocating budget cap, and who are mostly lawyers, accountants, and of similar, non-technical ilk, who do not really understand complexities of production, and technology development issues.

Budget cap is an artificial limit on spending by a team which is suppose to cure <something>. I will be darn if I know whatever that is, because no one ever really defined well. Is it an attempt to achieve state of racing in which, as an example, Ferrari can proudly boast - we have defeated Manor, we are the king of the hill? Manor who?

Rhetoric such as "spending is out of control" is really a hollow statement, because context is missing. Is it expensive? In today world for whom and why? Has anyone actually seen itemized spending ledger to make such claim that team is really spending much? In whose eyes anyway? Expenses are accumulating in the environment where a team is hopping countries, and continents whole year around, while running parallel competitive development, because next race result is dependent on it, and so on. I want to see anyone who would know what the budget figure should be to cure that (undefined) illness. Sad truth to be said, many proponents of budget limit are looking over the fence or shoulder to the past, ignoring the fact, that in the past sport was mostly centralized on European continent with lesser expenses on travel, as opposed to what we see today, as new, indirect operational expenses must be creeping in. 

Team's budget is controlled by a team. Every team has it, and they do not need an outsider to meddle in private accounting books only later to have private financial information posted on the internet, and if someone cannot afford it, they do not enter the sport. Technology based racing is not baseball, or ice hockey, that you hire an MBA to figure out variants which player can be purchased, and which one has to leave. There is no similarity of such sporting activities to the F1, and any attempt for remote adaptation os similar regulatory instruments just shows, how little proponents of budget understand F1 product.

Budget cap would be difficult to police to make it fair, even more difficult to enforce it, and consequently there will be new, and rather massive and ongoing expenses re-directed to non-racing activities just to deal with and regulate this nuisance. Budget limit might result in team's stagnation, and kill the series which actually always has promoted itself to be unique and at the top of cutting edge of technical development as it relates to racing. If imposed, I wonder if people who are advocating this actually could explain what will follow, should a team go over budget in mid-season, for example. Difficulties with budgets are obvious to anyone who actually ever had to control a massive budged, as opposed to just possess an opinion about it on the internet. Budget in reality is a financial framework in which a team operates, however it is not a line in the sand which no one can cross under any circumstances.

Desirable solution for decreasing cost, if there is desire to do so, is no simple matter, and majority of teams have to decide on technology direction they wish to take. Building racing space shuttle is expensive, thus developing a simpler car, and keeping regulation relatively stable would be perhaps step into a direction where expenses could be stabilized. Jerking with rules every 6 months is counterproductive to savings, just as some of the restrictiveness which produced so far nothing, but empty stands around the track.

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Cmon guys can't you see it's a scam? I've mentioned this time and time again. For the past ten years bernie said we must reduce costs, what happened to the money saved in the sport? In bernies fat pocket. Fvck at the rate this sport has suposidly cut costs, it should be free to run a team by now, you see where Iam coming from? If the money was injected back into the sport, then why is more and more cost cutting required? Think about it. They can't test when they want, they can't develop what they want so where is all this money going?

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On 12/20/2016 at 10:43 PM, Ruslan said:

No real surprise here. I think a lot of people looking at the "bigger picture" have seen that a budget cap is necessary. Todt concluded it was. Max Mosely, after being intimately involved in screwing up F1, also has decided it is necessary. Now Libery Media has.

The tendency in these forums is that any discussions of budget caps tend to get off-handedly dismissed, and I have yet to see an argument against them that registered with me. But clearly, many people at the top of F1 clearly see the reasons and need for it. So if it happens, in long-run, it will be a good thing. With Liberty in and Eccelstone possibly out, it may well happen. We were going to have a budget cap in 2015 until Bernie arranged to kill it.

Clearly not so. At least this man is not agree with you.

Buget limits are not effective.

With all these restrictions (and destroying competitive racing in process) in past several years we have not saved a single EUR, says Marchionne. When a guy on a forum stated the same for past several years, no one paid attention. Forum wisdom is in hands on experience with management of big budgets.  Now you have it confirmed from the big cheese. 

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Was there a probe?

With the FIA backing being the last major hurdle for Liberty, the company plans to complete its takeover of F1 before the end of this month.

Looks like no one is concerned about conflict of interest then. Certainly motosport.com isn't.

Quote

Michael Schmidt, the respected correspondent for Auto Motor und Sport, also revealed  that F1 teams expressed "little interest" in buying shares when the Strategy Group and F1 Commission met in Geneva on Wednesday.

A source at one top team said: "Without influence on the future direction and marketing of Formula One, purchasing shares is not very attractive for us."

Good!

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The King is dead, long live the King!

Interesting developments in the F1 world! Seismic changes at the top?! Bernie is no more, Ross Brawn as the new MD!


What do you guys make of this?!

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On 9/30/2016 at 7:02 PM, Massa said:

F1 will never succeed in the United States.  I have no faith in this management saying, "We want to be in America because we're Americans."  There's zero sense in it.

Auto racing in the United States is dying, and dying fast.  NASCAR loses close to 25% of its audience every single year.  The 100th Indianapolis 500 (this year's) was one of the least-watched ever.  The other IndyCar races have bottomed out at about 0.09% of the U.S. population watching them.  Sometimes, F1 gets more viewers than IndyCar, but even then, F1 has HALF the audience on cable ("pay TV") in the U.S. that it had in 1995, and has a lower audience on network ("free TV") than it did in the mid-2000s.  In a nation of 327,000,000, only 33,000 people tuned into the sports car race at COTA.  The NHRA (drag racing) is drowning in irrelevance.  MotoGP has fallen into the most premium tier of cable—of 118,000,000 homes with cable TV in the U.S., only 18,000,000 have the channel MotoGP is on.  Even the youth-oriented Global Rally Cross, which is part of the X Games, gets p**s-poor viewership.

So, no one watches auto racing in the United States anymore.

Now, look at attendance.  No one goes, either.  NASCAR, IndyCar, sports cars—racing in front of aluminum bleachers and empty viewing mounds.  New auto races are met with extreme opposition by the public (see IndyCar trying to race in Boston).  Other than COTA, no new major-level circuits have been built here in over a decade.

And then you get to the other part: of those still watching, they're not a desirable demographic.

Auto racing fans are among the oldest of all sports.  Part of NASCAR and IndyCar's problems is that all their fans are dying, and no one younger is stepping in.  Even GRC, again, which was invented by TV network ESPN to attract young people to motorsports, has a very old demographic.  If you look at viewership and compare it to the figure of those who are age 18–49, you'll see how alarmingly poorly auto racing does in the United States with that key segment.  As more young people live in cities, are in debt, and care about the environment, auto racing becomes less and less popular—and it's important, too, that millennials in America have made their political beliefs very, very central to their identities (as religion declines among youths, youths have instead adopted politics).  Auto racing is seen as conservative.  The youths are extremely liberal.  They can't see past NASCAR drivers endorsing Trump and the big racing states—North Carolina and Indiana—passing laws against LBGTQ persons.  And they question why racing remains a sport where almost every visible figure is a white man (I question it, too, and am admittedly embarrassed by the political endorsements of racing).

And that's part of the demographic issue.  No diversity.  Racing fans in America are white, Christian, mostly did not go to college, lower-middle-class incomes.

Another problem: F1 already has done a lot in America that's made no difference.  What do they propose to try?  We've had countless USGPs, including the current one at a state-of-the-art facility in a very, very cool city.  None moved the needle.  We require four races to air on free TV every year—doesn't move the needle.  We have an American-based team; no one cares.  Lewis Hamilton was on 60 Minutes.  Sebastian Vettel was on David Letterman's show; when JPM was in F1, he was on there, too.  None of it makes any quantitative difference to F1's presence here.

The only glimmer of potential in America is that F1 does pretty well on UniMás, Univision's other over-the-air network.  The demographic is very young (in large part because Spanish-speakers in America are, as a whole, a very young group, and the future of this country).  Despite being in 30,000,000 fewer homes than NBCSN, the channel that normally carries F1, and despite many of those homes not speaking Spanish, F1 on UniMás has gotten higher viewership than F1 on NBCSN.  UniMás is free, so it's on every TV in cities where there is an affiliate, but many cities (the Midwest in particular) have no affiliate, so no one has it.  NBCSN is pay TV, but ends up in more households because a lot of people pay for TV in America.  The point being, data in specific markets is unfair (e.g., UniMás is in Houston, so it getting more viewers in Houston means nothing), but nationwide, the comparison is more than fair—if anything, it is biased to NBCSN.

But that's not what I suspect this man is after.  I think he's a moron.  Auto racing peaked in America and will never peak again.  NASCAR exploded in the early 2000s when it was on network TV every weekend.  Dale Earnhardt died and it got huge attention.  9/11 happened and NASCAR jumped on the "IT'S PATRIOTIC TO WATCH NASCAR" bandwagon even before the NFL did it.  An economic bubble made it easy to sponsor race cars, keeping the sport competitive and exciting, and easy for fans to travel around the country to go to races.  The economy collapsed, the marketing gimmicks started to fail, and now NASCAR's bubble is forever burst.

And most people in America think NASCAR is all racing.  They think the Indy 500 is NASCAR.  They probably saw Lewis Hamilton on 60 Minutes and thought he raced NASCAR.  And Americans now know what NASCAR is and know they don't like to watch NASCAR, so they won't take to F1, which to them is NASCAR, and NASCAR, to them, sucks.

You speak the truth, young man. F1 is and always will be a European phenomena - like Le Mans. I won't rattle on but when the current Concorde agreement ends in 2020 the teams will take over, led by Ferrari with Ross as the ringmeister probably. Liberty Media don't have Bernie's cajones and he's milked the cow dry.

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4 hours ago, Unknown? said:

The King is dead, long live the King!

Interesting developments in the F1 world! Seismic changes at the top?! Bernie is no more, Ross Brawn as the new MD!


What do you guys make of this?!

Ecclestone should have left a long, long time ago, taking Whiting with him of course.

He has left alone which means that the need to fix races "for the sake of the show" remains in place.

Moreover, other hackers are already taking over.

So, all in all, the change is very much welcomed even when it amounts, so far, to much of the same.

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I'm sad to Bernie go. It was past due, but he has done alot of good for the sport. Him going means we'll hopefully see the last of Whiting too. Now that is great news if you ask me.

Brawn being in charge is brilliant. Now it all makes sense as to why Ferrari wasn't able to get him... he wasn't available anyway.

I hope Brawn course corrects this sport back to something we can actually get excited about. Dump the hybrids, remove the fuel restrictions, allow more design innovation, and let more teams have a go. I have no problem with a team only last 1-2 years in the sport, as if it's easier to join, more will follow. But it's near impossible for teams to get into F1 now it's so difficult, and I don't think it's all to do with sponsorship money.

I'm okay with Ferrari losing their $100m special bonus. Give ALL teams money based on how well they place. Not this ridiculous situation where one team gets a big load of money by scoring 1 point, and hte next team after them gets nothing.

Oh and remove blue flags. It's time this babies learned to pass the slower cars, as if that's even a hindrance, but it totally ruins the race for the slower teams and I'm sick of the unfairness of it all.

That's my biggest wish, for fairness to come back into the sport, and for the brave and innovative to be rewarded.

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Basically what many are saying, loyalty should be not rewarded. Aiding for 50 years to keep sport above that water is meaningless? The new World Order seems slightly confusing to me, as the traditional values in our lives are being trampled upon. Funny thing - RBR is rewarded more money than Mercedes is, just because they arrived earlier into paddock in recent times, yet no one is bothered by that; maybe because it is not Ferrari, and despite fact, that Mercedes as a brand was actually at the cradle of GP racing already in times, when people like Ecclestone were still drinking mother's milk, and earlier than that.

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2 hours ago, Sakae said:

Basically what many are saying, loyalty should be not rewarded. 

I think it's more along the lines that Ferrari F1 haven't won the title in ten years but have been given close to $1,000,000,000 for simply 'being', whilst other teams systematically fail due to unfair distribution of wealth.

It's similar to La Liga television rights where (historically at least) Real Madrid and Barcelona could negotiate their own rights and took more money for themselves than the other 18 clubs combined. Money = the best assets. The best assets = continued success. Continued success = money. And the circle continues. 

At work it doesn't matter to me how long someone has been in the job compared to me. If we do the same job I expect to be paid the same wage.

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Last time I've checked, we live in capitalism (as opposed to communism). It is a system, in which people negotiate and manage their income to the best they can. Is it Ferrari's problem that some other teams are poor negotiators? CVC surely has money to cover the differences and toss some crumbs to a few teams. On the other hand maybe they know what they do have in Ferrari, and what companies like Manor bring to the table. Ferrari was always a contender, and if someone doesn't likes it,  the minute you standardize series in income and equipment, then you burry series very quickly. Ferrari contributed to rise of the GP fame. IMHO (and I am not even an Italian), they do deserve every EUR what they get. Their bonus is last problem anyone should be spending time on.

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I agree to an extent with some above comments, yes he has done a lot for the sport but he has also in say the last 20/25 years done a lot for himself an to ruin the sport int he process. IMO the first step to solving the issue with the sport was to get rid of him and finally I feel some positivity coming out of all this. This IMO is the first step to recovery and I just hope the new guys keep making smart and wise decisions. Having there own vision instead of being brainwashed and manipulated into keep the current system in place. Not like the previous owners who let bernie just run riot, Well done.

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4 hours ago, Sakae said:

Last time I've checked, we live in capitalism (as opposed to communism). It is a system, in which people negotiate and manage their income to the best they can. Is it Ferrari's problem that some other teams are poor negotiators? CVC surely has money to cover the differences and toss some crumbs to a few teams. On the other hand maybe they know what they do have in Ferrari, and what companies like Manor bring to the table. Ferrari was always a contender, and if someone doesn't likes it,  the minute you standardize series in income and equipment, then you burry series very quickly. Ferrari contributed to rise of the GP fame. IMHO (and I am not even an Italian), they do deserve every EUR what they get. Their bonus is last problem anyone should be spending time on.

This has nothing to do with communism or capitalism. I'm not advocating all the teams get equal money. I'm saying they should get equal 'appearance money' if you like, and then a reverse pyramid positional payment (more for finishing higher). I don't care how long Ferrari have been in the sport. The sport is bigger than any one team and clamouring for the continuation of ridiculous payments and systems like this is to clamour for the maintenance of the status quo. F1 is rotten from politics to design to cost and paying $100,000,000 a year for a team that has done NOTHING bar a half decade of success in the last 30 years is a testament to this.

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I think that Ferrari should grab this opportunity and retire, F1 is doing them no good at all these days, all they manage to achieve is to be beaten by people who bend the rules (I'm referring specifically to RBR), being blamed for the money that they receive and criticized for whatever reason. I personally believe that leaving F1 would be good for Ferrari, all that they can achive is to ruin their reputation, Porsche which is their main competitor hasn't been around F1 for a long long time and they don't seem to suffer for this, same goes for Lamborghini.

Ferrari should try Le Mans, win there once or twice and than concentrate on their road cars, same as Porsche.

When Ferrari won't be around any longer we will see if Red Bull or Williams (I assume that Mercedes might leave at some point in the near future, for reasons that are similar to Ferrari's) can pull in the crowds.

It's also funny to notice the timing: Ferrari lodged a complaint exposing the fact that RBR and Mercedes raced for most of the 2016 season with a car that was not in compliance with the rules and all of a sudden Ferrari becomes the main problem that F1 is facing because of their legacy money, notwithstanding the fact that RBR receives a lot of legacy money despite having been around for a few years only (Sauber has been around for longer, do they receive legacy money? I don't think so).

Marchionne needs to understand that Ferrari has become a liability for F1 and that F1 has become a liability for Ferrari (and a very expensive one), it just doesn't make sense any longer, Ferrari must concentrate on what keeps them in business and F1 has to prove that they can live without Ferrari.

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I do fear that this might be end of the road for them. I am sorry to see Vettel in this situation. F1 branch of the FiA has lost the plot long time ago, it's not even funny anymore. Vettel might have been on something in one of those races of last year.

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I still don't get the whole 'legacy' payment thing. Should English football clubs have legacy payments from FIFA because they were formed first? IMHO Ferrari and any other team shouldn't be given money because they exist. I don't watch F1 for Ferrari. Or any other team in particular. 

I don't know about RB but all I'd speculate is that they bring two teams and a race track to the table. Even that being said, payment shouldn't be made based on what you bring or how old your name is. If this remains the case we will NEVER see a team even likely to win a race let alone challenge for the championship that doesn't come with HUNDREDS of millions of budget. We complain about astronomical costs and the lack of competition but you guys want Ferrari to have $1,000,000,000 over ten years just for being in the sport?? 

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The complaint Ferrari made is nothing special. All teams query everything all the time. This time, the complaint/inquiry was successful (from a challenger's POV), but If it was illegal it would have been ruled as such during the season or the teams would be faced with exclusion from the championship now. It's merely clarification for next season in a (common) attempt to reign in the competition. 

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Ferrari has a star team quality, and should be paid as such. In any sport, cinema, theater, music hall, design, or wherever, stars are simply paid better. It's not that difficult to argue that point.

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40 minutes ago, Sakae said:

Ferrari has a star team quality, and should be paid as such. In any sport, cinema, theater, music hall, design, or wherever, stars are simply paid better. It's not that difficult to argue that point.

No, they don't. They have a household name, and nothing else. Whilst I agree their longevity deserves recognition, I simply cannot stand behind one billion dollars per decade for 'star quality', especially for a team as poorly run and as under performing as Ferrari. 

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