FORMULA ONE
F1 without Ferrari? The silly season continues Dispute between FIA and iconic team reflects battle over budget capsFrom Thursday's Globe and Mail
May 7, 2009 at 12:53 PM EDT
Just when fans thought Formula One couldn't get sillier, the head of its governing body announced last week that he believes the sport wouldn't miss the Ferrari mystique.
Only 18 months after admitting that the team with scarlet cars deserves special status in F1, Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) president Max Mosley made a 180-degree turn about the significance of Ferrari to the sport.
"The sport could survive without Ferrari," Mosley told the Financial Times. "It would be very sad to lose Ferrari. It is the Italian national team."
A fixture in the sport since the first world championship in 1950, driving for Ferrari remains the dream of every F1 racer. Canadian Gilles Villeneuve's no-holds-barred style made him one of the most popular Ferrari drivers with its fans, known as Tifosi. He died in a qualifying crash at the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix.
There's little doubt that the loss of Ferrari and its millions of Tifosi would leave F1 irrevocably diminished. That's exactly why the sport's commercial boss, Bernie Ecclestone, negotiated a special deal to pay the team about $80-million annually to keep it in F1. The agreement also scuttled a plan by the manufacturers to start up a new rival series replacing F1.
The sweet deal for Ferrari continued a simple but effective divide-and-conquer strategy employed by Ecclestone and Mosley over the years to destroy the teams' shaky alliances. And history suggests that Mosley's newfound blas� attitude toward Ferrari highlights the seriousness of a behind-the-scenes battle raging in the paddock over budget caps.
Mosley and his cost-cutting agenda line up on one side of the fight with F1 ringmaster Ecclestone and his need to squeeze more cash out of the sport to pay its creditors. The cap is important to Ecclestone, who needs to use the teams' reduced costs to convince them that they no longer need a bigger piece of the revenue pie.
But the long-time friends face a united front of 10 teams determined to seize more control over the sport and keep more of its revenue for themselves, especially with several big dollar team sponsors preparing to leave.
Mosley's $70-million budget cap proposal for next season allows added technical freedom to deploy moveable front and rear wings and remove rev limiters from engines to teams that sign up. The cap will not include engine costs for 2010.
Those who don't sign will need to find speed in other ways, something the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) feels will create a two-tiered championship.
"There are doubts as to whether or not two categories of teams should be created, which will inevitably mean that one category will have an advantage over the other and that the championship will be fundamentally unfair and, perhaps, even biased," Ferrari president and FOTA chairman Luca di Montezemolo wrote in a letter to the FIA last week.
"Additionally, any controversy on the actual respect of the cost cap would undermine the image of F1 and could seriously damage any involved team."
FOTA believes that policing the budget cap will be next to impossible because developments may be derived from manufacturer resources outside the jurisdiction of F1's appointed watchdogs. In the end, Mosley's level playing field may be tilted through clever accounting.
Furthermore, with Mosley also admitting that there will be "grey areas," it indicates that enforcing the cap across the board may be an unattainable goal.
And so far this year, the FIA's greyness in rule making doesn't inspire confidence. Three teams exploited a loophole to design a rear diffuser - an aerodynamic element that channels air from beneath the car - that gave them a distinct - and some felt unfair - advantage.
More importantly, the design runs counter to the movement to increase overtaking because it helps the teams compensate for the loss of downforce brought by new aerodynamic restrictions this year.
Nevertheless, a four-team challenge of the diffuser design was rejected by the FIA last month.
The fuzzy thinking on rules also extended to the FIA World Motor Sport Council (WMSC). It found McLaren guilty of breaching F1's sporting code after it misled Australian Grand Prix stewards about a pass of its driver Lewis Hamilton by Toyota's Jarno Trulli during a safety car period. Trulli was disqualified from a third-place finish before being reinstated after the deception was discovered.
It was the second breach of the sporting code by the team in 18 months - McLaren officials were caught with confidential technical documents belonging to Ferrari in a spy scandal that rocked the sport in 2007.
While some might assume that recidivism should bring a more severe punishment, the WMSC decided on a suspended three-race ban because the team apologized and promised not to do it again.
McLaren's pledge to go straight may sound familiar. The team made a similar vow after being slapped with a $100-million (U.S.) fine for the spy scandal.
At the time, McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh reassured the FIA that while the team's actions caused it to mislead the WMSC, "we have put in place procedures to prevent further recurrences of such conduct."
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