Formula One news
Ecclestone: "The teams had a chance"
10 June 2009Bernie Ecclestone is firm in the belief that a budget cap is the way forward for Formula One. As the sport's manufacturers remain without full entries to next year's World Championship amid an ongoing argument over the spending limit, commercial rights holder Ecclestone is adamant that disproportionate expenditure could destroy the future of the sport, explaining that the argument could have been avoided over a decade ago.
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| Ecclestone departs FIA headquarters after a meeting in Paris at the end of April |
With the 13 competitors for 2010 set to be announced this Friday Ecclestone, of Formula One Management (FOM), described his view of events as the Ferrari team argues that - due to the cap being put into place now - contracts already signed to race until the end of 2012 should be declared null and void. "That's not how we see it," supremo Bernie said to The Daily Express, "but the lawyers will argue that for a long time." With no agreement yet found, teams have already threatened a breakaway series. "I'm not sure that the boards of teams such as Toyota and BMW, who are already looking to cut costs in F1, would sympathise and bankroll their teams going off to a series which would not be the FIA F1 Championship - it costs a lot of money to set up a series.
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| Leading team figures met with drivers on race day morning at Istanbul Park |
"Right now, we supply the venues at no cost to the teams, they roll up with all their sponsors' names and money and race in front of a huge television audience which I supply through the contracts we win; that money then flows back to the teams and they spend it. It would be different when they have to provide all the venues, hire their own race people, find their own television companies - and we have the best - and promote it."
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| FOTA presented its own cost-cutting measures for the first time at the start of March |
So far in 2009, a new order has been established in Formula One, which Ecclestone believes - for the majority of fans - is nothing but a positive thing. "This is a great championship for most people because they like having Brawn and Red Bull at the front rather than Ferrari and McLaren, as usual," he said. "This has happened because of the rule changes and because we have stopped testing in a season, which I was always against.
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| Max Mosley, FIA president |
"What has happened here this year is exactly like when Colin Chapman ran Lotus, when he was the guy who introduced the ground-effect car. Everyone said he was cheating - it was just that Colin spotted what he could do and other people couldn't. Ross Brawn (Brawn GP) and Adrian Newey (Red Bull) have come up with the best cars this year - different styles: one with diffuser, one not - it shows it can be done with the right people."
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| The 13-team line-up contesting the 2010 World Championship will be revealed on Friday |
With the €45m budget cap in place and a cocktail of new teams interested in joining the sport, the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) - currently representing all bar Williams and Force India - believes that the total abolishment of the cap, and for its own group to manage cost-cutting ideas, is the way forward. "Don't forget that Ferrari spent a fortune and didn't win the title for ten years," Ecclestone pointed out. "Money doesn't buy success - it could wreck the sport. As for the drivers, they want to win the FIA F1 World Championship or some of them would be elsewhere getting more money to win a title that means less. I don't think they will get a series going."
He concluded by describing how the current argument with FIA president could have been avoided: "The teams had a chance to sign the 1998 Concorde Agreement, which would have protected them from Max's (Mosley) technical changes, but they said 'no'."
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